[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Tue, 5 Nov 2024, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

This is interesting. I had no recollection at all of Elephant branded
media, and I wondered if it might have been a US-only thing... so I
Googled them, and as soon as I saw the detailed full-colour logo, I
immediately remembered.

There is some deeper point about recollection here that is probably
doctrine taught in marketing schools... if there are such places.


Elephant was supposedly the highest MARGIN for floppy disks.
While that might seem to imply a very low cost one sold as premium, a high 
margin is not necessarily an indicator of low quality.  For example, for 
many years, Apple produced very high quality products, while having the 
highest margin - they knew that could get people to pay more.



I seriously doubt that Leading Edge had a factory, but no idea whose disks 
they rebranded.  Quite possibly a no-name generic.


Elephant's marketing was colorful, at a time when all others were very 
staid.


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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

I used Elephant.  Still have piles of them and they are all still
readable (and probably writable but I don't want to lose the data
they hold.)


SOME batches of Elephant were quite good.


The biggest laugh I ever had was when we complained about a problem
writing floppies under UCSD Pascal on a Terak and their answer was to
buy Terak Brand Floppies.


Sometimes, it is worth having one, just so that you can tell their 
"support" that their own brand doesn't work either.


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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Non-descript 5.25  DS/DD  (they don't format as 1.2M disk using a 1.2 5.25"
drive, so I'm pretty sure they are actual 360KB disks).   That said, I


On Mon, 4 Nov 2024, osi.superboard via cctalk wrote:
from my experience, these "Non-descript" are often the cause for format 
errors. Look for high quality disk media like

Dysan 100 5.25 MD2D
2D/2D "BASF"
MD2-DD "Maxell" or
DS,DD from "3M"


Any Dysan disks are generally superior to most others.
Even Verbatim "Datalife" are substantially more reliable than generics.
(Verbatim, BEFORE "Datalife", were worse than generic)


Although, in the 1990s, generic disks had improved to the point where they 
were usually almost as good as the worst of the brand name ones.  And 
certainly better than SOME brand name disks, such as "Wabash', and some 
batches of "Elephant"



In addition, these "Non-descript" disk are most likely pre-formatted by 
factory, so Degaussing is recommended or at least formatting on a 360k drive.


Since he is trying to write 360K images to them, in a 1.2M drive, he 
should definitely NOT format them in a 360K drive!


Probably bulk erase, with a degausser, then do it again, then do it with a 
different degausser?
If they still won't work (after eliminating drive as problem), then staple 
them.


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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

haven't really fully confirmed if it's a 1.2M drive.  TEAC FD-55GFR
142-U, because I haven't actually come across any 1.2M formatted media.



Teac FD-55GFR is a 1.2M drive that can also be used as a 720K 5.25" drive.
(FD-55G is 1.2M; FD-55F is 720K)


On Mon, 4 Nov 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

Just be sure to set the drive jumpers so that the spindle speed is 300
RPM, not 360, which is the usual default for PC drives.



Earlier, he mentioned having to switch data transfer rate from 250K bps to 
300K bps:


" I did have to change the IMD Settings to Sides Two, Double-step On, and 
the 250kps to300kps.  I don't fully understand that last setting, but 
absolutely it was necessary - the IMD image file wouldn't write to disk 
otherwise."


IFF that is the same drive, then 
THAT would certainly imply that the drive is currently running at 350 RPM


(at 360 RPM, unless the data transfer rate is switched to 300K bps, each
track will be too long to fit in a single revolution)

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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:

Non-descript 5.25  DS/DD  (they don't format as 1.2M disk using a 1.2 5.25"
drive, so I'm pretty sure they are actual 360KB disks).   That said, I
haven't really fully confirmed if it's a 1.2M drive.  TEAC FD-55GFR
142-U, because I haven't actually come across any 1.2M formatted media.


Do they have hub reinforcing rings?


If yes, then they are probably 360K
If no, then they are probably 1.2M

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:

Non-descript 5.25  DS/DD  (they don't format as 1.2M disk using a 1.2 5.25"
drive, so I'm pretty sure they are actual 360KB disks).   That said, I
haven't really fully confirmed if it's a 1.2M drive.  TEAC FD-55GFR
142-U, because I haven't actually come across any 1.2M formatted media.
I've wondered if maybe one of the heads on the D: drive the Sharp PC-5000's
dual disk drive might have some kind of issue (either the REad or Write
head, not sure which) - just since it seemed more likely to end up with
some bad sectors marked when using FORMAT.COM (whereas on other systems,
the same disk would format fine with no bad sectors).


Teac FD-55GFR is a 1.2M drive that can also be used as a 720K 5.25" drive.
(FD-55G is 1.2M; FD-55F is 720K)

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

[cctalk] Re: undocumented instructions including HCF [was: System 360 question]

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

The IBM monochrome monitor could be damaged by putting it into an 
unsupported mode.



The idea of a command that would brick the system is popular.
It may be possible, but it's very difficult to track down the details from 
FOAFs.


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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Tue, 29 Oct 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

The location of track 0 is radically different in the 96 tpi and 100 tpi
conventions--there's about a 6 track offset.  100 tpi drives were also
spec-ed as being 77 track (like their 8" relatives).


Are the tracks offset from one side of a disk to the other?

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

360K drives (40 track) have tracks 48 tpi. (Early on, Shugart SA400, and



On Tue, 29 Oct 2024, Tony Duell via cctalk wrote:

For the pedants, the IBM 360K format is 80 track. 40 cylinders, each
of 2 tracks, one on each side of the disk.


point taken.
I should have said "Tracks per side"


There were a few 100tpi 5.25" drives. Annoying because they couldn't
read 40 cylinder disks even if you double-stepped them. Didn't
Commodore use them in the 8050?


Yes, but this was in response to 360K/1.2M issues.
I have had some 100TPI, both Micropolis and Tandon TM100-4M
One of the 100tpi Tandon drives is mislabeled as being TM100-4, without 
the criticaally important 'M'



3.5" drives tend to be 80 cylinder, 135 tpi. There were a few 40
cylinder 67.5 tpi drives with, I assume, a wider head. I've never seen
one in a PC though.

Not in s PC, but Epson Geneva PX-8 used one.


The spec I can find for the 40 cylinder 3" drive says it's 100tpi. So
I assume the 80 cylinder one (often used as a second drive on Amstad
PCW's) would be 200tpi.



It is possible to use a 1.2M drive to make a usable 360K disk,
Use the right ("360K"/300 Oersted) diskette.  DO NOT USE A 1.2M DISKETTE!
Start with a thoroughly bulk eraased or virgin disk that is NOT "preformatted"
The 1.2M drive will have to "double step" to get 40 tracks at 48tpi
The drive must not be using the HD write current (I've no idea of amperage)
The drive must switch to 300 RPM at 250K bps, or switch to 300 bps at 360 RPM
The resulting diskette will have narrower tracks than normal, which is
usually not a problem, but the tracks will be at the right spacing.


I've done this many times, mostly to write 40 cylinder CP/M disks on
80 cylinder drives. I use a bulk-erased disk, format and write on the
80 cylinder drive then copy it to a fresh 40 cylinder disk on the
target machine. Never had any problems doing that.


Shouldn't ever have problems with it.  But, if the disk is damaged, 
would the wider track be able to survive a little more damage?


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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

2) motor speed is not as easy as increasing/decreasing voltage.
On a belt driven drive, you might be able to change pulleys.  Althoug, I
think that a "50Hz" pulley on a "60Hz" drive might give you the change
from 300 RPM to 360RPM?, . . .
Some/many?/all? 8 inch drives use synchronous motors (8 inch drive power
connections were NOT standardized!) with one of their voltages being a
lowered voltage AC



On Tue, 29 Oct 2024, Tony Duell wrote:

I've never seen a 5.25" or smaller floppy drive with a mains
sychronous motor.
Nor I.  I don't recall ever seeing a 5.25", 3", 3.25", nor 3.5" that used 
anything other than 5VDC and/or 12VDC


Almost all of the 5.25" (and, I think 3") used the same "molex" connector.
I have a 3.25" drive that uses the same connector as 3.5", BUT different 
postions for the voltages!



As an aside, Tektronix used normal 8" drives in some of their
machines, always fitted with 60Hz pulley sets. They produced a 115V
60Hz output in the power supply, frequency contolled by a crystal. As
a result said machine would run off 50Hz mains, 60Hz and indeed 400Hz
aircraft supplies without pulley changes


How much 115VAC power do they produce?


3) 360K and 1.2M require different current level for writing.  1.2M drives
will generally have a signal (pin6?) for choosing current

It was pin 2 on the original PC/AT 1.2M drive (I've just checked the
TechRef) and I would guess most clones did the same thing.


THANK YOU!
I put the question mark because I wasn't sure, and 6 didn't seem right.



The other for the PortablePC and PCr. Black panel, no asterisk. A Qumetrak 142.

I've got a PortablePC (5155) in bits on the bench at the moment. I
don't much like those Qumetrak drives to work on. I have the IBM
TechRef and the Qume service manual. Both contain schematics. The
schematics do not agree with each other, or with either of the drives
in my machine (which are both IBM labelled Qumetraks and are slightly
different)
Quite why IBM used 2 different drives from different manufacturers I don't know.


Because one couldn't supply drives with an asterisk?
or because they didn't want to use the crappy Qume 142 drives on anything 
else?
The Qume 142 was so slow stepping, that that was one of the reasons for 
introducing PC-DOS 2.10, to have a slower step time.


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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Converting drive:


SOME 96tpi drives had a jumper to make them always double step
SOME 2 speed drives had a jumper to force one speed.

SO, it couldbe jumpered into a 360K, other than the heads being too narrow

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Track width
360K drives (40 track) have tracks 48 tpi. (Early on, Shugart SA400, and 
Apple SA390, only used 35 of those tracks)  That's about 1/2 mm from 
center of one track to center of the next.  The track itself is about 
1/3 mm wide, leaving a little blank space between tracks.


80 track (both 1.2M, and 5/25" 720K/800K) have tracks 96 tpi. that's about 
1/4 mm from center of one track to center of the next.  The track width is 
about 1/6 mm.


(BTW, 8" disks are 48tpi)


It is possible to use a 1.2M drive to make a usable 360K disk,
Use the right ("360K"/300 Oersted) diskette.  DO NOT USE A 1.2M DISKETTE!
Start with a thoroughly bulk eraased or virgin disk that is NOT "preformatted"
The 1.2M drive will have to "double step" to get 40 tracks at 48tpi
The drive must not be using the HD write current (I've no idea of amperage)
The drive must switch to 300 RPM at 250K bps, or switch to 300 bps at 360 RPM

The resulting diskette will have narrower tracks than normal, which is 
usually not a problem, but the tracks will be at the right spacing.



DO NOT "RE-WRITE", nor "RE-FORMAT" a 360K diskette in a 1.2M drive unless 
you throughly bulk erase it.


When you RE-WRITE a 360K diskette in a 1.2M drive, it already has wide 
tracks, and the 1.2M drive will write a narrow track down the middle of 
each.  It will still be quite readable with the 1.2M drive.
BUT, a 360K drive, instead of finding a wide track, finds a wide track 
with a narrow track down the middle of it! (and tiny gaps alongside the 
narrow track)  It can't read that.
By analogy, a bike caan ride down the middle of a car tire track rut, and 
two bikes can go side by side in the two ruts.
But, if you try to analyze the tread pattern, it's different in the 
middle than away from the middle, and won't match anything.
On fresh mud, two bikes at the right distance apart can make a pair of 
rute that looks like a car with narrow wheels.


(a 5.25" "720K/800K/"quad density" drive has the same problem)

(BTW, "quad density" is a marketing obfuscation.  It is still double 
density, but with more tracks, conflating disk total capacity with linear 
density. It is not a change in the linear density.)


(BTW, Superbrain (intertec?) when the changed from SSDD to DSDD called the 
two sided same density, "QUAD DENSITY"!  But, then later when they went to 
80 track DSDD, which many companies called "Quad density", they couldn't 
call it that, because they had alread used that term.  So, they called it 
"SUPER DENSTY"! and abbreviated that SD (which means FM/single-density to 
everybody else))




If you do tackle the Herculean task of converting a 1.2M drive into a 360K 
drive, be aware that that will have abnormally narrower heads!



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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

Converting drive:  (NOT PEACTICAL!)

1) Disk controllers intended for 360K generally run 250K bits per second 
(125K for single density), and do NOT support the 300K bps and 500K bps 
that are needed. 
Weltec sold some drives with a VERY bizarre work-around, by making the 
drive of a 1.2M drive spin at 180 RPM!  180 RPM with 250kbps being 
equivalent to 360RPM at 500K bps



2) motor speed is not as easy as increasing/decreasing voltage.
On a belt driven drive, you might be able to change pulleys.  Althoug, I 
think that a "50Hz" pulley on a "60Hz" drive might give you the change 
from 300 RPM to 360RPM?, . . .
Some/many?/all? 8 inch drives use synchronous motors (8 inch drive power 
connections were NOT standardized!) with one of their voltages being a 
lowered voltage AC


BTW, NEC APC? ran their 3.5" 1.4M drives at 360RPM, instead of 300RPM. 
That meant that all three of their sizes (8", 1.2M 5.25", 3.5") could have 
the same format!
Some Japanese 3.5" drives (called "3 mode?") canswitch between 300 and 
360RPM!



3) 360K and 1.2M require different current level for writing.  1.2M drives 
will generally have a signal (pin6?) for choosing current

So, that will require a work-around.
(also, READY/DISK CHANGED signal was not completely standardized.)


AFTER coming out with the 1.2M drives, it bagan to be important to tell 
them apart.  So, getting it backwards?, they started embossing an asterisk 
on 360K drives.  So, any drive with an asterisk is 360K, a drive WITHOUT 
an asterisk might be a 1.2M, OR might be a 360K from before they added 
asterisks.

If you convert any drives, be sure to add or remove asterisk :-)
A label maker would help with that, and also lable which drive is
"A" or "B"

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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

I'll have to answer some other questions later, . . .


Diskettes:
For writing 10K/180K/320K/360K disks, use THOSE, never 1.2M dikettes!
"360K" diskettes are 300 Oersted; 1.2M are 600 Oersted.
The 1.2M/600-Oersted dikettes use a reduced write current (pin6? of the 
interface)


Twiggy disks, and Amlyn cartridge (5 disks in a jukebox holder) were 600 
Oersted.



If you try to use 1.2M diskettes for the lower density, it might seem to 
be working, but the recording doesn't last.  Using Roytype (who the 
college purchasing agent was sleeping with) HD disks with TRS80 gave us 
disks that didn't keep their contents long enough to sneakernet to another 
machine!


To tell them apart, there is usually a difference of color.
and 1.2M diskettes generally do NOT have a hub reinforcing ring (unless 
somebody manually added one later)
360K diskettes generally come with a hub reinforcing ring.  (except for 
EARLY ones, such as Verbatim before they came out with "Datalife")
The reinforcing ring was because many early drives would occasionally 
misclamp and mangle the edges of the hole; later drives, including all 
1.2M were probably an improved shape of clamping cone.



In contrast, 720K/400K/800K 3.5 inch disks are 600 Oersted;
1.4M 3.5" disks are about 750 Oersted
Which is close enough that a high quality 720K disk could be used as a low 
quality 1.4M, . . .


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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024, Steve Lewis wrote:


That is because you are writing "320K" disk in a 1.2M drive.
double step is to get 40 tracks instead of 80


Makes sense, thanks.  I wasn't 100% sure if this was a 1.2M drive or not.
How difficult is it to change a drive?  And could it go the other way,
upping a 360K stock drive to support 1.2M?  I imagine it's not as easy as
jumper settings- but a matter of voltage divider maybe?  I don't want to
void my warranty  (joking!! :) )   I think I've heard of people altering
their drives, I just hadn't seen it done.

I guess another 5.25 related question comes to mind - when a new system was
delivered, they had (cardboard?) inserts into the drives.  Was that more to
protect them during transport/delivery? Or a dust protection? or both?  For
long term storage (maybe 6+ months?) should we put inserts back into our
5.25 drives?


I'll have to answer the other questions later, . . .


I think that the cardboard is to protect the heads from banging into each 
other.
With the door of the drive closed, the heads are close together, and can 
hit each other if the drive is jarred.
They probably do help keep dust off of the working surfae of the head(s), 
but I don't think that tat is the reason for them.


If you don't have one, and need to move the drive afound, or ship it, 
although it's not quite as good, the full thickness of the jacket of a 
disk will do.  Just turn the disk 180 degrees, so that it's the full 
jacket, not just the cookie between the heads.  (For a Twiggy disk turn it 
90 degrees)


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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:


Thomas,
Those images for the SHARP PC-5000 boot disk of MS-DOS 2.00 have worked
splendidly (at least the .IMD files, DiskImage is all I tried).  I did have
to change the IMD Settings to Sides Two, Double-step On, and the 250kps to
300kps.   I don't fully understand that last setting, but absolutely it was
necessary - the IMD image file wouldn't write to disk otherwise.


That is because you are writing "320K" disk in a 1.2M drive.
double step is to get 40 tracks instead of 80
a 160/180/320/360K drive spins at 300 RPM, and uses 250K data transfer 
rate.
But, a 1.2M drive spins at 360 RPM, so you have to either change the drive 
to 300 RPM at 250k, OR use the 360RPM at 300K


(some drives are dual speed; the FDC has a 300bps rate to compensatefor 
those that are not.)


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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Impressive claims were made about station wagon full of tapes hurtling
down the highway.


On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

I still have the Samsonite briefcase I used to transport 7-track tapes
as carry-on baggage.  Jets even then, were much faster than station
wagons.  6 tapes to a trip.
More than once it was "hand the tapes to someone meeting you at the gate
and catch the next return flight".


I sold Microsoft FORTRAN [for TRS80] to the college (while I was both 
teaching and running a business)

I was not the teacher of the FORTRAN class.
But Lifeboat (the distributor) kept missing deadlines, and telling me that 
it had been shipped, and then telling me that it would be shipped soon.


So, I called my friend Bob Wallace who was still working at Microsoft (he 
was the tenth employee).  On my way back from the eclipse in Montana, I 
flew back with a stop in Seattle.  Bob got the FIRST THREE copies (so 
THAT's why Lifeboat couldn't ship yet!), and handed them to me in the 
Seattle airport.


I was not impressed by The teacher.
He was as sharp as a bag of wet hair.
He announced that the compilers "DO NOT WORK", because he typed in a tiny 
trivial code example in the manual, and it failed due to a typo of a 
missing comma in the printing of the manual.  (That any REAL FORTRAN 
programmer would spot immediately.)
I corrected his source code, and he grudgingly accepted them. 
A few years later, he left (without notice) for a position at Cal State 
Hayward, and, with six hours notice, I began teaching Fortran. But, by 
that time, the college was using IBM Microsoft Fortran for the PC (which 
had its own problems)


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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, Christian Liendo via cctalk wrote:

Actually I posted the ArsTechnica article in one of the New York Times
internal chat channels on Oct 16th, I was hoping someone would pick
this up. I did the same when Chuck Peddle died.

I work for the Times and there are a few people here who appreciate
old technology. I don't have any pull, but some of the writers are
serious techies.

As for the article, this is the New York Times and not ArsTechnica.
The readers are different and the writers have to find ways to relate.
Depending on your perspective, BBSes were the social systems of the
time. I can see the link between them.

I thought it was well written and regardless of what you think of the
Times, it is nice to see Ward Christensen remembered with a proper
obituary.


. . . and, did you hear about first on this list?
if so,
NYT heard it from you,  (THANK YOU!)
you heard it from this list,
I did the first post about it on this list
I heard about it on another list,
the person who posted about it on that list doesn't remember source

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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

More than once it was "hand the tapes to someone meeting you at the gate
and catch the next return flight".


On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:


How did you know you were handing it to the right guy and not a Russian spy?


He said, "Julius sent me", and had a piece of a Jell-O box

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

And yet, Minix ran on the 8088.


One system called "Minix", from Digital Systems House was based on AT&T 
Unix code, but I haven't found out anything about it.



Much more popularly known as "Minix", was a Unix-like operating system 
written by Andrew S. Tannenbaum, the person usually credited with the 
quotation:
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes 
hurtling down the highway."



Linus Torvalds employed a monolithic kernel instead of a microkernel, as 
Tannenbaum's Minix used.  Tannenbaum and Torvalds argued about that: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_debate


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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

How about Tymshare/Tymnet/SBCetc.

Did Call Computer in Mountain View employ a file transfer protocol for
use by subscribers?


Impressive claims were made about station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the 
highway.

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

dialog (1966), Compuserve (1069), The Source (1979, so a tie), and
Community Memory (1973, but not dialup), and probably a few lesser ones
preceded CBBS.


On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:

Come on, Fred.  You're old but you're not that old, and I don't think there
were computers back in 1069.  At least I don't think there were.


Yes, that was a typo (adjacent keys).

But long ago, people hired to do arithmetic were called "computers" :-)
or at least "calculators"

But, even so, I doubt that the vikings who discovered America, nor king 
William the Conqueror (subjugating Northern Englan), nor Romanos IV 
(attacking the seljik Turks) did much arithmetic.


They were still reeling from Y1K.
Stonehenge wasn't portable, or at least Belafon the systems analyst said so.
Antikytheran devices were in very short supply.

And, it was more than 500 years before the Pascaline (developed by Blaise 
Pascal), Napier's Bones, or slide rules.


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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

The author, presumably a heavy Reddit, TikTok and Facebook user, seemed to
have never heard about existence of computers before internet, nor about


On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, Joseph S. Barrera III wrote:

Y'all are ignoring CompuServe and that is hurting my feelings :-)


dialog (1966), Compuserve (1069), The Source (1979, so a tie), and 
Community Memory (1973, but not dialup), and probably a few lesser ones preceded CBBS.


BUT, CBBS did have a few things to distinguish it.
no SUBSCRIPTION charges
a peer culture, without major corporate management and control
Of interest only here: run on a Z80 (8080?) miscrocomputer
encouraged others to do the same (absolutely not the case with the commercial 
ones)

For those unable or unwilling to pay for a subscription, and for those who 
just wanted to casually try it withno committment, CBBS made it possible.

THAT got quite a few people started.

So, CBBS was extremely important, but not "THE FIRST" bulletin board system.
(and, of course, XMODEM was not "THE FIRST" file transfer protocol)


(thank you, to our newspaper people, for clarifying why XMODEM was barely 
mentioned)

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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote:


Yes, UUCP was literally a thing, but UNIX was unobtanium in the early
computing eral - The world of the University Minicomputer.

It certainly wasn't even vaguely accessible by a hobbyist running a
Z80 or 6800 in the late 70's.

I vividly remember being able to take home a NEC 80386 computer from
my day job (I worked for a computer store selling NEC machines) during
the Christmas shutdown between 1987/1988 - It had SCO Xenix installed
and a new graphical system (To SCO) called 'XWindows'   Unheard of - I
did a heap of learning.

That was probably the point where a UNIX like operating system became
accessible to people. Then 386BSD arrived (1993) and Linux came (1991)
into the scene and suddenly unix was everywhere - I still remember my
first stack of installation media for freeBSD - something like 10
1.4MB floppies for the Binaries, and another 10 for the source files.

So - yea, UUCP was around, but it wasn't alive in hobbyist circles.


Very slightly before that (not by much), Xenix (Unix without the 
trademark royalties, and peddled by MICROS~1) could run on a 80286.


Bill Gates said that the 80286 was "brain dead". (possibly due to the 
difficulty of switching back and forth to "protected mode") 
The 80386, and even the 80386SX, was a very welcome step.


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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, Mike Katz wrote:

I agree with you but phrased differently.  XMODEM is ubiquitous but CBBS 
created a
totally new way of sharing information and is the forerunner of everything from
CompuServe to the internet, instant messaging and even social media.

Most people reading an obit would not appreciate the significance of a data 
transfer
protocol however the first "social media" type message system they would 
understand.


Community Memory (Lee Felsenstein, Ephrem Lipkin, et al) preceded it by 
about five years.
BUT, CBBS was the first with dial-up access [from home], rather than 
dedicated publicly available terminals.


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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Good point

I don't see much impact of that on this one.  Other than editing in his 
brother's statement that it was a heart attack, I don't see anything 
obvious in this about whether it was pre-written long ago, or freshly 
written.  (XMODEM was already extremely popular 40 years ago)
Would the fact that NYT took 10 days before publishing it be an 
indication that it was NOT previously written?  I would have thought that 
the reason for a "death file" was so that an obituary could immediately 
follow the news.



I don't know much of anything about Edson de Castro, other than Data 
General Nova.
But I like to think that if I were tasked to write about him, I would ask 
around [to people such as you? :-)] and try to find out more about the 
other things that he did (such as working on PDP-8).
But, I don't have your newspaper experience, so maybe that would be 
unrealistic.


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


On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, Wayne S wrote:


One last thing…
Most news organizations have a death file for famous people.
Their obits have already been written.

Sent from my iPhone


On Oct 23, 2024, at 14:23, Wayne S  wrote:

I do understand that opinion in and i agree. It’s that having worked for major 
newspapers for 35 years, i know the way stories are written and how much work 
goes into them and how much editing and fact checking is done. There is only so 
much space for words and can’t be covered,  so the writer and copyeditor have 
to trim the article. Xmodem, while important, is not something the average 
reader would know or remember much about, but a lot of people would remember 
BBS systems since they were all over the news back then.
If you were to write an obit of Edwin deCastro, who recently died, what 
accomplishments would you emphasize?


Sent from my iPhone


On Oct 23, 2024, at 14:10, Fred Cisin via cctalk  wrote:

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
I have to respectfully disagree.
This is an obituary for a person who has died, which is not a complete history 
of his life. The articles are rather lengthy, for an obituary in a major 
newspaper where space is limited. I think the author did do some rather deep 
investigation. He did talk to Ward Christiansen‘s brother for remembrances and 
information.


We can get along without agreeing :-)

If you will pardon some exaggeration to make clear my point,
it is somewhat like going into detail about Henry Ford being co-founder of 
Kingsford charcoal, and then only two mentions, in passing, of making cars.  :-)

Yes, I admit that is an exaggerated analogy.
CBBS WAS extremely important and significant.
But, I think that XMODEM had even more long-term impact.

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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, Wayne S via cctalk wrote:

I have to respectfully disagree.
This is an obituary for a person who has died, which is not a complete history 
of his life. The articles are rather lengthy, for an obituary in a major 
newspaper where space is limited. I think the author did do some rather deep 
investigation. He did talk to Ward Christiansen‘s brother for remembrances and 
information.


We can get along without agreeing :-)

If you will pardon some exaggeration to make clear my point,
it is somewhat like going into detail about Henry Ford being co-founder of 
Kingsford charcoal, and then only two mentions, in passing, of making 
cars.  :-)


Yes, I admit that is an exaggerated analogy.
CBBS WAS extremely important and significant.
But, I think that XMODEM had even more long-term impact.

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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen NY Times Obituary

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, Robert Feldman via cctalk wrote:


Ward Christensen, Early Visionary of Social Media, Dies at 78

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/21/technology/ward-christensen-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UU4.nswM.540OUXuySX84&smid=url-share


Thank you for sharing that.


The author, presumably a heavy Reddit, TikTok and Facebook user, seemed to 
have never heard about existence of computers before internet, nor about 
any computer to computer connections other than internet.  He does not 
seem to know about anything except CBBS,and that solely because it 
"resembles Facebook".

"Early Visionary of Social Media"


It is an adequately detailed story of his life, and mostly about CBBS ("a 
forerunner of Reddit, TikTok and Facebook")


A dozen paragraphs about CBBS, but XMODEM barely rated a mention, and even 
there, only about its use on CBBS:


"In 1977, he developed a protocol, called XMODEM, for sending computer 
files across phone lines; it was later used on C.B.B.S."
. . . 
"For decades, his license plate read, XMODEM."


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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 17 Oct 2024, Steve Lewis wrote:


I follow all that (on the DEBUG.COM notes) and appreciate the notes - that
will save some time, I look forward to trying a few things out tomorrow.

I forgot to do VER explicitly, but on boot up it is saying MS-DOS 2.00.

And just now, I recalled that on github there is MS-DOS source (and bins) -
I think Dave's Garage, he recently did a video on building and booting
MS-DOS 4.0 from that source.   Maybe I should use this as an excuse to try
a 2.0 build?Or least, reading through the FORMAT.ASM, I see all the
DOSVER checking stuff - helps confirm patch addresses, or maybe try just
recompiling that one utility without this check.


Reading through the CONFIG.txt in the MS-DOS 2.0 github repo, it's
interesting near the end:   (the use of forward slash instead of backslash,
ha! and just above this, the comments mention /dev/)

"A typical configuration file might look like this:

BUFFERS = 10
FILES = 10
DEVICE = /bin/network.sys
BREAK = ON
SWITCHAR = -
SHELL = a:/bin/command.com a:/bin -p"


GOOD
So, you should be able to patch FORMAT 2.11 ti work on the DOS version 
that is running.


BUT, whether Format /S  or SYS  will work remains to be seen.


I have seen cases where the opening banner does not quite match the stored 
version number, such as 4.01 V 4.00

and a conditional jmp needs an exact match.


So, definitely run VER

and/or
in debug  A(Assemble)

MOV AH,30
INT 21
INT 3; ends program and displays registers

and see what it shows in AX
(running that in CMD of my Windows 7 gives 0005 (5.00)!)


One of the early homework assignments when I taught PC Assembly was to go 
into DEBUG and patch LINK.EXE and EXE2BIN.EXE to eliminate DOD version 
checking.



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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

I don't know your level of familiarity with DEBUG, assembly, etc.

So, if you need more detail, then when I get a chance, I could write out 
more detailed instructions



First step, is to confirm whether the DOS that is running is actually 2.00

If so, then we can work on making the DOS 2.11 FORMAT run under DOS 2.00

Be aware that 2.11 is an OEM version, and is sometimes heavily customized 
for specific hardware.  Ideally, you will want the MODE.COM that is 
specific toyour hardware.


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

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

MAKE SPARE COPIES OF FORMAT.COM, BEFORE YOU STEP ON IT!

[cctalk] Re: Running DOS executables on other versions of DOSRe: Looking for Sharp PC-5000 disk drive (CE-510F or possibly MZ-80B)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 17 Oct 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:


Well, none of the bubble cartridges has a FORMAT.COM.There is MODE.COM,
CHKDSK.COM, EDLIN.COM, and then SYS.COM .
And trying to run FORMAT.COM from another DOS 3.30 on the PC-5000, it
actually does try to run, but then says "Incorrect DOS version"


Try te VER command, to confirm whether what is running is 2.00


Back in 1982?, when PC-DOS 1.10/1.25 came out, with different disk format, 
there were problems.  If you stuck one of those disks into a machine 
running PC-DOS 1.00, and ran CHKDSK, it would proceed to gladly "repair" 
problems with the disk rendering it unusable.  (well, alot of tedious 
manual repair of the DIRectory needed)


SO, MICROS~1 eventually changed CHKDSK, to not make repairs unless 
you had used the /F (fix) option, and explicitly asking you whether you 
wanted it to do the "repairs"
(I had an interesting conversation with Jef Raskin about his view that "if 
a disk is unreadable, and therefore presumably blank, The computer 
should just go ahead anf FORMAT it")


Then, they made another change.  EVERY executable program included with 
DOS, before it runs would check the currently running DOS version, and 
refuse to run if it was the wrong DOS version running.  NOT ALL programs 
had a problem with running under another version, but they had to be 
cautious..  That created problems with some executables, such as LINK and 
EXE2BIN that were acquired with one version of DOS, but were needed on 
other versions.


The solution to THAT in DOS 5.00? was SETVER.  Setver lets DOS lie about 
it's age!  So, when you want to use DOS 2.00 LINK, you can use setver to 
tell DOS, "If LINK asks the DOS version, tell it 2.00", etc.


Obviously you don't have SETVER, that came along later to solve that 
problem.  SO, you need to do a mnor patch.


You could seek out a copy of DOS 2.00 FORMAT.

OR, since the differences do NOT matter, you can patch FORMAT to not care 
about which DOS version is running.


It will be simplest if you use a relatively old verstion of FORMAT that is 
a .COM file, not a .EXE  Unfortunately the filename won't work for 
determining that.  (later versions of DOS, when progams became too bulky 
for tiny memory model, they used .EXE programs, but renamed them .COM!

Fortunately, DOS 2.11 should be ideal.


The sure way to tell whether itis REALLY .COM or .EXE is whether the 
first two bytes of te file are "MZ" (Mark Zbikowski!)  ALL .EXE files have 
his initials as the first two bytes of the file, disunirregardless of 
whether the filename claims to be .COM or .EXE

REAL .COM programs will NOT start with "MZ"


Load it into DEBUG   DEBUG FORMAT.COM

(any version of DEBUG that works for you, on any computer)

Use the U command ("UNassemble")
find where it has
MOV AH 30
Int 21
CMP AX, 1e03  or whatever.  (3.30)

If the next line is JNZ . . .  or JNE ...,,  replace that with NOPs, or a 
JMP to the next instruction after the JNZ


If the line is JZ or JE, . . . repace that with JMP

OR, change the CMP AX, 1E03 to CMP Ax, 0002 
IFF VER reports 2.00



DOS stores the major version number internally as a number which function 
30 returns in AL, and a minor version number whigh it stores as if it had 
been a 2 digit decimal number returned in AH


Therefore, your 3.30 is not 3 - 3
It is 3 - THIRTY

Yes, 3.30 thinks that its version THIRTY of DOS 3!

By removing or bypassing the comparison of version number, it will now 
NEVER give "INCORRECT DIS VERSION"






We're trying another cut of the Sharp MS-DOS 2.11 image (the first one had
some issues).  It has a FORMAT.COM, so hopefully that
will just work.  If not, then maybe trying to extract an older FORMAT.COM
from a DOS 1.X image might be worth a try?  I'm not too savvy
about boot sector stuff and DOS interrupts - maybe there is some DEBUG.COM
stuff that can help probe boot sectors of these bubble cartridges?
I'm not sure if I can borrow a DEBUG.COM from another DOS disks, will try
that also over the weekend.


DEBUG.COM will only run on the version of DOS that it shipped with unless 
you do the same patch.  'course how do you run DEBUG to patch DEBUG if it 
won't run until sfter you patch it? :-)


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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen (BBS, XMODEM) has died

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

When my mom died, at home , at age 99, the ambulance people said that
an autopsy has to be performed when someone dies at home. The police
also came and said the same thing.
When my mother-in-law passed, in the hospital, no autopsy needed to be
done.
I did not ask specifics in either case.


On Tue, 15 Oct 2024, Ali via cctalk wrote:

Was an autopsy actually done? Did they contact you with a report/result? I can 
almost guarantee that a 99 y.o. passing in her home will not warrant an autopsy 
short of some other horrible thing happening at the same time e.g. arsonist set 
the house on fire and now the DA wants to link the death to the arson to add a 
murder charge.


Are there differences in different areas?
Is "autopsy has to be performed" a city, county, state, or federal mandate?


Ward Christensen died in Rolling Meadows, IL
What are the rules THERE?

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen (BBS, XMODEM) has died

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Here is a little more information:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/ward-christensen-bbs-inventor-and-architect-of-our-online-age-dies-at-age-78/


still no cause of death ("probably natural causes"), memorial services, 
relatives/loved ones left behind, etc.

[cctalk] Re: LCM STL Files for 3D Printing of DEC PSU Chassis

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

George Morrow said,
"I believe in standards.  Everyone should have one."

About 45 years ago, he and Howard Fullmer tried to standardize the
S100 bus.

There seemed to have been as little  written about Howard's death as the
void around Ward christensen's death.


On Tue, 15 Oct 2024, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:

Understandable, considering he eventually turned his back on the industry
and never looked back.


BTW, THANK YOU for getting George's widow to relinquish the rights to 
"Quotations Of Chairman Morrow" , so that it is available to all.

[cctalk] Re: LCM STL Files for 3D Printing of DEC PSU Chassis

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Tue, 15 Oct 2024, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from" - 
Andrew Tanenbaum.


George Morrow said, 
"I believe in standards.  Everyone should have one."


About 45 years ago, he and Howard Fullmer tried to standardize the 
S100 bus.


There seemed to have been as little  written about Howard's death as the 
void around Ward christensen's death.

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen (BBS, XMODEM) has died

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 14 Oct 2024, Mike Katz wrote:

Does anyone have any information about visitation or a wake or funeral?


I was unable to find any information using Google.  Nothing about cause of 
death, memorial services, etc.


If you find any information, please share.

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen (BBS, XMODEM) has died

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 14 Oct 2024, Ali via cctalk wrote:
(C-Modem, J-Modem, N-Modem... I was waiting for them to run out of 
letters).



Speaking of alphabetic order, . . .

35 years ago, I was interviewed for a puff piece in the comdex daily "news".
Among other amateur stupid questions, I was asked "Do you want FAME?"
I replied, "Well, someday, I'd like to be recognized a little, and 
maybe even listed along with Ward Christensen."


The very next year, the attendee roster of a conference I went to listed:
...
Christensen, Ward
Cisin, Fred
Cisler, Steve
...

That is much preferable to being listed with him in the subject 
line of this thread


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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen (BBS, XMODEM) has died

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 14 Oct 2024, Ali via cctalk wrote:

(C-Modem, J-Modem, N-Modem... I was waiting for them to run out of letters).


Washington, DC had a solution to that exact problem:

"Once the alphabet to Y is exhausted, the street names are double syllable 
words from A to Y followed by triple syllable words A to Y followed by the 
names of trees and flowers. Sometimes, this system is referred to as the 
first, second, third, and fourth alphabets."


https://badercondominium.org/Bader_Streets.html#:~:text=Once%20the%20alphabet%20to%20Y,%2C%20third%2C%20and%20fourth%20alphabets.


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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen (BBS, XMODEM) has died

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Your book should probably have a chapter on the age of BBS's
With thorough mention of Ward Christensen

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

On Sun, 13 Oct 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:


I'm afraid time abides no one! It seems that the greats were of an earlier
time, no pun intended, but they were pioneers who made technology work for
them.Happy computing. Murray 🙂

On Sun, Oct 13, 2024 at 9:05 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk 
wrote:


1945 - 2024

Found dead 10/11/24 in a "wellness check".

Little or no other information yet.

Ward Christensen created the first "BBS".
Then, when he needed to transfer files, he created XMODEM.  The XMODEM
protocols became the de facto standard for transferring files.
Later, there was some competition from Kermit, but, other than being "FROM
A
UNIVERSITY!", it wasn't nearly as good.


Not only are all of the greats dying off, but soon there won't be anybody
around who even knew about them.

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

[cctalk] Re: Ward Christensen (BBS, XMODEM) has died

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

1945 - 2024

Found dead 10/11/24 in a "wellness check".

Little or no other information yet.

Ward Christensen created the first "BBS".
Then, when he needed to transfer files, he created XMODEM.  The XMODEM 
protocols became the de facto standard for transferring files.
Later, there was some competition from Kermit, but, other than being "FROM A 
UNIVERSITY!", it wasn't nearly as good.



Not only are all of the greats dying off, but soon there won't be anybody 
around who even knew about them.


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

[cctalk] Re: Valuable floppy archiving: seeking current best practice

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 9 Oct 2024, Wayne S via cctalk wrote:

My pleasure. Be aware that not all floppy disks were written the same way. 
Regardless of different filesystems, there were different flux encoding schemes 
too.


MOST are FM, MFM, or GCR.
But not all.
f'rinstance, Amiga is MFM, but does not use WD/IBM sector headers, so a 
179x controller could read an Amiga track, but parsing sectors and file 
system has to be done in software.
. . .and other variations, ranging from hard/soft sectors to CLV/CAV 
(constant linear velocity (varying motor speed), constant Angular 
velocity (fixed motor speed))


old floppies provide a neverending source of interesting stuff.

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

[cctalk] Re: Valuable floppy archiving: seeking current best practice

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On 2024-10-09 2:30 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:


MSX is unknown in USA!
It was for Z80, and the disk format was MS-DOS
. . .
Generic PC clones got so cheap here that nobody would buy Z80 any more.


On Wed, 9 Oct 2024, ben via cctalk wrote:
I thought it was the cheap apple clones that did it, as most CP/M was on the 
S-100 bus.


MSX was later; PC was thoroughly dominant by then, and Apple was solidly 
estalishing Macintosh.


MSX-DOS was created by Tim Paterson as a port to Z80 of MS-DOS 
1.25.  The rest, and hardware, was primarily Japanese, but later marketed 
everywhere except USA.


https://www.msx.org/wiki/The_History_of_MSX-DOS

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

[cctalk] Re: Valuable floppy archiving: seeking current best practice

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 9 Oct 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

Anent strange floppy formats--I recall there being one in the early 70s
that used a UART to encode an entire track (1 sector per track).  I'm
not talking about using a USRT-but an honest-to-goodness 8-bit plus
parity start-stop, etc. device.
Was that one an OSI innovation?


Quite likely.

OSI (Ohio Scientific, Inc.) interfaced disks with a 6820 and 6850! :

https://osi.marks-lab.com/boards/schematics/OSI470.pdf

https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/the-strange-world-of-ohio-scientific-floppy-disk-controllers/3997

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

[cctalk] Re: Valuable floppy archiving: seeking current best practice

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

I used several which did. MGT G+DOS was my personal favourite. MSX-DOS
is CP/M-binary-compatible but uses MS-DOS FAT disks, with directories,
because the same chap wrote them both: Tim Paterson.


On Wed, 9 Oct 2024, ben via cctalk wrote:

That is new to me, but what cpu?
Where are the ADS for said product?


MSX is unknown in USA!
It was for Z80, and the disk format was MS-DOS

I saw some at comdex.
I waited for MSX machines to showup here, but it never happened,
although I did find [and buy] a Yamaha MSX machine from Waite Group, at 
John Craig's Computer Swap America.

Didn't see another one.

Generic PC clones got so cheap here that nobody would buy Z80 any more.

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

[cctalk] Re: Valuable floppy archiving: seeking current best practice

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 9 Oct 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

Floppy disk, wuzzat?
:)
Chuck
(still kicking, barely)


Keep kicking!

It's a round piece of magtape material that wasn't long enough to make 
a tape.


Some people even claim that if they ever get the bugs out, it might even 
replace punchcards!


Just think, you could fold it up and carry it in your pocket.
There's a hole through the middle for spindling them.
And you could get a lot of them into your station wagon hurtling down the 
highway.


'course, it'd take a lot of them to hold as much as a RAMAC.

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

[cctalk] Re: Valuable floppy archiving: seeking current best practice

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

I once had a brief discussion with Gary Kildall, in which I pleaded with 
him to create a "secondary" standard for 5.25".

He replied, "THE CP/M standard is Single Sided Single Density."
He felt that people, disunirregardless of which hardware they were using 
SHOULD be able to transfer back and forth with 8" SSSD

So, we ended up with thousands of 5.25" formats.


On Tue, 8 Oct 2024, ben via cctalk wrote:
That is because the 5.25 was 'no standard' format, because the selling of a 
cheap media device. 35 tracks, single density to who knows what, as 
every other year a new standard and media.
I think the real reason Kildall stuck with that standard,was sectors were 
128 bytes, and things had to shoehorn into what memory you had.

CPM I think was only 2K of ram for the OS,and 256 bytes of system RAM.


Also, he believed in a single standard, and the user had an obligation to 
be able to get to and from the standard.
If he added "secondary" standards, as I was suggesting for 5.25", there 
would be a never ending proliferation.

Need a standard for double sided.
Need a standard for double density.
Need a standard for 40 tracks.
Need a standard for 80 tracks.

Need a standard for 3"
Need a standard for 3.25".
Need a standard for 3.5"
. . .

By refusing to create a "secondary" standard, he avoided dilution of 
the standard, and he stood up for his belief that everybody should at 
least be able to comply with THE standard.


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

[cctalk] Re: Valuable floppy archiving: seeking current best practice

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Tue, 8 Oct 2024, roger arrick via cctalk wrote:

I figured he was mistaken, the old 'standard' is SSSD.


Well, that's the CP/M "standard".,
and, admittedly,  on my first look at the message, I, too, did a double 
take on "double density"


I once had a brief discussion with Gary Kildall, in which I pleaded with 
him to create a "secondary" standard for 5.25".

He replied, "THE CP/M standard is Single Sided Single Density."
He felt that people, disunirregardless of which hardware they were using 
SHOULD be able to transfer back and forth with 8" SSSD

So, we ended up with thousands of 5.25" formats.


The original poster was NOT CP/M, so 8" SSSD was not applicable.  He said:

The disks are boot media and other materials relating to the RSRE Flex
operating system  as 
developed for PERQ workstations.


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

[cctalk] Re: Valuable floppy archiving: seeking current best practice

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Tue, 8 Oct 2024, roger arrick via cctalk wrote:

We need a lot more of this type of preservation.
I've been doing my part and built an imagedisk machine with an Adaptec 1522CF 
controller which allows me to read single density.
I've started specializing in systems with 8" drives.
Imagedisk along with 22DISK to read and copy CP/M files, and anadisk to dive 
into weird formats.
All running DOS 5 via SD card on a machine that use to run Windows 95.

. . .

I run my SA850 open so I can see the head surface.
They are easy to clean and not near as delicate as we've always heard. 
. . . 

Reading SSSD 8" 28x128 77 track disks is fairly easy.


A trivial nit:
he said DOUBLE sided; which is unimprtant other than they are not "CP/M 
Standard" format.


I ageee that Imagedisk is a good way to handle it.
IFF there were format weirdities, such as copy protection, then a flux 
transition board is good.



I'm not sure how much good "baking" does.

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

[cctalk] Re: Dysan Alignment and Performance Testers

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 3 Oct 2024, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
Yes, and in a pinch I have done that.  What you want is to hack the format 
program so you can write just ONE track.  Bulk erase the floppy and then 
format just one track.  Put a scope on the analog read amp signal and see if 
it looks good.  Then, loosen the screws on the stepper motor and turn the 
motor to maximize the signal.  Other drives with square motors require some 
tweaking of the coupling between motor and linear rollator.


Trivial enhancements:

"Teaching grandma to suck eggs":
use DOS, not Windows 11.

Do a very thorough bulk erase.
And then use a 96tpi drive to write to it, 
even if the target drive to be aligned is 48tpi.
That will give you a narrower track, centered on where the wide track 
would have been.


On a PC, rather than trying to make sense out of Microsoft's FORMAT 
program to modify it, it is not hard to go to Int13h and give it a format 
command. With NEC type of controller, you will need to set up a buffer 
containing a list of the sector header contents that you want.

(with WD controllers, you create a track image and do a "WRITE TRACK")

If the target drive to be aligned is 48tpi, and you use a 96tpi drive to 
make the test disk, use a "360K" or "720K 5.25" disk, NOT a "1.2M" drive, 
and remember that if you are going to write sector headers, to double the 
cylinder number.
If you use a "1.2M" drive, be sure to set the motor speed to 300RPM, not 
360 RPM and write at 250K bits per second,

OR, with the motor speed at 360RPM, write at  300K bits per second.


With analog alignment disks, you want at least a 20MHz scope; my NLS 215 
portable scope was not adequate.


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

[cctalk] Re: Dysan Alignment and Performance Testers

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 3 Oct 2024, dwight via cctalk wrote:

A small laser interferomenter and a screw driver could be used, once one 
determined the center of the track by magnetic material and a microscope. Some 
what special equipment but not all that special, now days.
Years ago, I went to a Seagate building to help a friend with a servo writer 
problem. It only took a few minutes so I never charged them. Of interest here 
was that they used a stepper motor to control the position of the head. The 
problem was that they wanted to turn the power off to the stepper motor to 
remove an stray magnetic fields.
They did it too soon while the motor was still in motion, causing the motor to 
not stop at the desired location. Adding some delay solved that one. So, the 
point is that a stepper was enough for a hard drive servo track.
Of other interest, they were using an AIM 6502, running figForth. The 
programmer was obviously a previous BASIC programmer because he'd named 
vaiables with names like A, B, ... , instead of meaningful names that would 
have made the code more readable.
Dwight


That delay is usually handle in software/firmware in the host machine.
After a step pulse, wait some time before another step, or other drive 
access, so that the head finishes moving, and "settles".


On PC, for floppies, there is a parameter block pointed to by Int 1Eh.
"Over-clockers" like to cut that track to track time down to the lowext 
that they THINK is adequate.


One (of several) reasons for the introduction of PC-DOS 2.10 was that the 
PCJr used Qunetrak 142 drives that were too slow for PC-DOS 2.00, so they 
had to increase the time.  Sure enough, an over-clocker put out a patch to 
shorten that extended time.



(-: might that be a use for the relays in the
"[cctalk] Might be antique computer parts"   thread? :-)
(emoticon captioned for the humour impaired; there are better ways to delay)


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

[cctalk] Re: Dysan Alignment and Performance Testers

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Some of the old-timers might remember a guy who was on this list a long
time ago, who claimed that the "copy-protectin defeating" program that he
used could copy ANYTHING, even alignment disks!


On Wed, 2 Oct 2024, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote:

Thanks for the bad flashbacks from 14 years ago.


Sorry.

[cctalk] Re: Dysan Alignment and Performance Testers

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

I assume it's not easy to copy alignment disks, but I guess I will

find out.

It's actually not possible to copy them.  Not for any "copy protection"
reasons, but just the very nature of the analog signal laid down on the
disk.  No "regular" disk drive can recreate the signal.


Chuck had actually talked about how to make one on a VCF post a while back:
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/greaseweazle-v4-reading-m1-5-25-fl
oppies-on-a-sa400a-drive.1242918/post-1380519. Didn't sound like it was
going to be as easy as copying a disk... ;)


On Thu, 3 Oct 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

No, not easy, but possible, given skill, equipment and patience.


An analog alignment disk would be an impressive task.

Something similar to the Dysan Digital Diagnostic Disk would be far more 
straight forward, starting with modifying a drive to be able to do precise 
(micrometer) postitioning of the head away from the normal position. 
Although far less precise and accurate than the analog alignment disk, . . 
radial alignment is done by seeing which off center tracks the drive can 
read. and adjusting it until it can read the same amount off-center in 
both directions. If it can read disks off-center in one direction better 
than disks off-center in the other diraction, that tells you which 
direction the head/positioner needs to be moved.


The REAL dysan Digital Diagnostic Disk puts sectors on one track 
progressively further out of position in alternating sides; calling for 
reading an equal number of even numbered and odd numbered sectors.  THAT 
would be difficult, but recording entire tracks off alignment by a known 
amount isn't so hard.



Some of the old-timers might remember a guy who was on this list a long 
time ago, who claimed that the "copy-protectin defeating" program that he 
used could copy ANYTHING, even alignment disks! 
'course, he was also the one who claimed that his 1990's "Sentry 7?) 
machine was the one that email had been "invented" on, that Valtrep was 
the predecessor to FORTRAN, and that he had a tape of OS/2 for the 
PDP(labeled "PDP OS/2"). 
Some of us speculated that that MIGHT actually be a backup tape from 
somebody having been using a PDP to develop some software to run under 
OS/2



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

[cctalk] Re: request for 5.25 floppies

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Pin 4 is "Head Load"

Pin 6 can be either "Ready" or drive select 4

Pin 10 is drive select for first drive.

Pin 34 is "READY", or "Disk Changed", or fourth drive selrct (TRS80)


BUT, IBM PC puts a twist in the cable (pins 10 - 16?), and does selection 
by the cable with all drives jumpered to be second drive. Drive A: is 
after the twist; drive B: is before the twist.

https://superuser.com/questions/849079/what-is-the-little-twist-in-this-floppy-ribbon-cable-for

So, at the very least, you will need to make up a cable.
possibly a straight cable, and jumper the drive as A: !


https://archive.org/stream/TNM_Sharp_PC-5000_portable_computer_-_Sharp_Elect_20180303_0200/TNM_Sharp_PC-5000_portable_computer_-_Sharp_Elect_20180303_0200_djvu.txt
says that CE-101F is a "System disk" (bootable)

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

On Wed, 25 Sep 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:


I'll take that offer, thanks Van!


And in general, about this experiment:

Reviewing my notes when I last explored into this, a little over a year ago:
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/sharp-ce-510f-disk-drive-looking-for-pinout-for-sharp-pc-5000-or-mz-80b.1242950/

It mentions: 360KB, 9 sector/track, DS/DD.

But also, it mentions a peculiar Sharp model number for disk media,
specifically "MS-DOS  CE-101F"
I've so far been unable to find an image of their stock OS, and so I'm just
hoping/gambling some distro of either PC-DOS or MS-DOS might work.

And their interface on this is a 37-pin, but digging into that (see notes
in the link above) I think some of the pins used ended up being different
than the pin out described in the IBM manuals for the IBM 5150's standard
disk drive controller (that also has a 37-pin connector at the back of
it).  By reading, it seems pin 4, 6, 10, and 34 were different (but I'm not
tech h/w savvy enough to deduce yet if it's just different ordering, or
truly different signals along the wiring)



One other thing - I think the PC-5000 on bootup (with the cartridges) I
recall it saying DOS 2.01 or possibly 2.11 - I don't have the machine near
me at the moment, but in a few days I'll be able to check again.


-Steve



On Wed, Sep 25, 2024 at 12:24 PM Van Snyder via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:


Only related to the subject, not the body of the discussion:

I found a stack of 5.25" floppies for Norton Utilities. I don't have
any 5.25" drives. If you want the disks, they're yours for a PDF of a
shipping label for 8"x10"x1" 8oz. I have no idea whether they're
readable.

Van Snyder
2229 Shields Street
La Crescenta, CA 91214

[cctalk] Re: request for 5.25 floppies

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

The Sharp PC-5000 was definitely MS-DOS, not PC-DOS.
PC-DOS, however might work on it!  or at least almost.
BUT, some of the supplied programs will be different.
For example, MODE.COM will be significantly different.

The PC-7000 was reasonably PC compatible.

The PC-5000 was VERY similar to the Gavilan.

The Gavilan came with an 8 line display, and later a 16 line display. 
But, it also had an RCA phono jack to connect to an external compostie 
monitor!

Gavilan had optional bubble memory cartridges, but that never caught on.
They had a thermal/ink printer that could attach to the backside. (plain 
paper with a ribbon, or thermaal paper, or excellent quality using thermal 
paper with the ribbon.

Yhey had an external 5.25" drive, and a clip-on second 3.5" drive.
The first Gavilans were 3" disks, but they soon changed to 3.5"
The drives were single sided, with a custom bezel, but that bezel could be 
easily mounted on Shugart SA350 to instaall in place of the stock 
drive, for double sided.

The Gavilan started off with a modified MS-DOS 2.00.
The Gavilan 3.5" disk format was NOT the same as PC-DOS 3.20 format, 
initially.  But, by their MS-DOS 2.11, with revision L (released after the 
company had closed down!), the format was matched to IBM's.


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

On Tue, 24 Sep 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:


Actually - in the Sharp advertisement, they "name drop" Microsoft
explicitly - so perhaps I misspoke in mentioning IBM's PC-DOS (but if we're
making disks, I'd just try to have both ready just in case).I've not
yet opened the external drive enclosure to investigate specific model/parts
(I'm very curious about the controller and how it differs from the standard
IBM ISA disk drive controller, but there is some difference since a 37-pin
drive that worked in my 5150 wouldn't work with this Sharp).

I'm generally clumsy with hardware (in a "oops, dropped that cup of screws
all onto the board while it was powered on" kind of way- maybe not that
bad, but enough to know to go slow and enjoy what I have for a bit first,
before I open it and screw it all up; my biggest regret was on a 1996
ThinkPad - it was running OS/2 just fine on a handsome solid state proxy
IDE, but I didn't like the color fade on the bezel of the CD-ROM, and just
"had" to going back in and address that - and that system has never booted
since).   Point being, I'd like to try some disk first before tinkering
inside this drive enclosure.   The host system is this:  <
https://voidstar.blog/sharp-pc-5000 > which I hope to finally prepare a
broader video about it before the end of this year.

And - oh, depending on the controller, we might be able to adapt a 720K
drive onto it?  I see, that'd be an interesting mod.  But not yet - gotta
try as-is first.  This Sharp is a tad confusing (or it was to me).  I had
the impression that the DOS was built into the ROM - but no, it's actually
copied/placed onto each of the bubble memory cartridges, so it is always
"booting" to DOS like a "normal" system.   Also in my notes - i may have to
revise on if the BASIC is built-in or not.  It's "built into" one of the
ROM cartridges you place into the bottom of the system.  So it's not
technically a "boot to BASIC" system either (I'm not sure if that excused
them from Microsoft licensing in some way??).   Or actually - I'll have to
unplug that cartridge and remind myself what all the system can do on its
own (as I recall, in doing so, it does "boot" into a self-running demo
mode).

I hope it's not too much of a lost cause - I think I do recall coming
across an article that mentioned that the system could be booted from the
external floppy.  And if it could miraculously boot to something like DOS
3.2 - well, I can't think of any program of that era that would play nice
with an 8 row screen.   But that's the goal here, to just see what
happens.  In the worse case, this will mean I can make a backup of all the
content of these bubble memory cartridges content, just in case they start
to deteriorate in some way  (that said - since it does have a "built in"
BASIC, I suppose technically I can do a BASIC that invokes the serial port
and I could export every file that way; thumbing through the manual it does
have some keywords that might accommodate that -- I'll save that as a last
resort).

And Thank You Travis, I'll be in contact!!
-Steve

[cctalk] Re: request for 5.25 floppies

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 25 Sep 2024, Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk wrote:

From the software's point of view the drives are the same (with different
limits of course), e.g. once I successfully formatted 3.5" HD medium for
80 tracks of 15 sectors double-sided and imaged a 1.2MB 5.25" disk onto it
for use with IIRC DOS 3.2 that didn't support 3.5" drives and it booted
from that disk and worked just fine treating the 3.5" HD drive as a 5.25"
HD drive.


yes
trivial correction:
3.20 supported "720K" 3.5" (also some OEM modified MS-DOS 2.00 and 2.11)
3.30 supported "1.4M" 3.5"

I used "720K" 3.5" drives, even down to PC-DOS 1.00 !
(but, my primary interest was reading sectors, and then parsing file 
systems)


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

[cctalk] Re: request for 5.25 floppies

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Tue, 24 Sep 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:

But does anyone here in the States happen to have a stack of known-good
5.25 disks they don't want anymore?


Sorry, not right now


have a drive for an old system that currently uses bubble memory 
cartridges to boot to PC-DOS 2.0, and so we'd like to see if (using 
these external drives) it could also boot to a (confirmed legit) image 
of IBM PC-DOS (and/or very early Microsoft DOS).  Or, do we still need 
some kind of proprietary Sharp DOS image? (in which case, extra blank 
disk would be good, as I think there are tools on these bubble memory 
cartridges to initialize disks accordingly).


What kind of drive is it?

If it boots to PC-DOS 2.00, not MS-DOS 2.00, then it is not some kind of 
proprietary Sharp DOS.


If Sharp, or whoever made your machine, ever did provide their own 
customized MS-DOS, it was likely to be versions 1.25, 2.11, or 3.31
Many OEMs added 3.5 support in MS-DOS 2.00 amd 2.11.  PC-DOS didn't 
support 720K until PC-DOS 3.20, and 1.4M 2ith 3.30



(did anyone ever make a "USB-to-5.25" drive? I have a couple 3.5 
versions of those - maybe the power to motor the 5.25 is too much for 
USB? :D ).


a few minor problems, in addition to power (easily solved with a external 
brick)

There did once exist a few, but they are VERY rare.
There were also some with cooperative circuitry, that had an unmodified 
3.5 drive in them that could be recabled to 5.25.

(still a few gotchas to deal with, such as "Disk changed" signal)


But, if you have a functioning 720K 3.5, you could put early 5.25 DOS on 
it, even down to 1.00, and just use the first 40 tracks.  In the days 
before the 5170, the machine didn't really care,


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

[cctalk] Re: What's the going rate for 80286?

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 18 Sep 2024, John via cctalk wrote:


Dunno, what does a box of Cracker Jack cost these days...?


I checked; Amazon has Cracker Jack THREE boxes for $4.53
That's sold by a third party, but fulfilled by Amazon.

I've been told that the current prizes are stickers to unlock games on 
their website.


They haven't had microprocessors as prizes in a long time.
The switch to games saved money, and protected them from liability 
lawsuits for choking on a prize (an 80286 might do some damage if swallowed)


So far, Arduinos are still more expensive than stickers.  But, keep 
waiting.


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

[cctalk] What's the going rate for 80286?

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Electronics Goldmine has them for $19.95

https://theelectronicgoldmine.com/products/g28288


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

[cctalk] Re: auction starting in 50 minutes

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

And perhaps craziest of all, $189k for a 360/91 console display.  Just 
the lights panel, nothing more.
Well, that might be all thatthe interior decorators wanted, for hanging on 
the wall


On Fri, 13 Sep 2024, David C. Jenner wrote:
This was from the 360/91 at UCLA when I was there in the 1970s.  I recall 
seeing them working on refurbishing it when I was last at the LCM a few years 
ago.


If the machine was being refurbished, why was the console display 
separated from the machine?

[cctalk] Re: auction starting in 50 minutes

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

The closest that you can get is records of the serial number.
And statements of experts.
A signed statement by Abby Sciuto


On Fri, 13 Sep 2024, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

I get a real laugh every time I see statements like this.
Back when I was still in the military (around 2005) I had
to attend a Navy Security briefing.  Everybody got a real
kick out of the opening (break the ice) statement that NCIS
didn't have a lab at all.  All their lab work was done by
Army CID at FT. Gillem, GA.


Perhaps it needs to be emoticon captioned for the humor impaired.

Abby Sciuto is a fictional forensics epecialist in a fictional show.
She does wondrous stuff, such as getting hits of computer facial 
recognition from reflections from a shiny car fender.

[cctalk] Re: auction starting in 50 minutes

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

I wonder if anyone has done a study of high-profile auction sale prices vs
apples to apples contemporary sales prices (ebay, etc) of the same item.
Paul Allen's [item name] will always sell for more that Joe Schmo's [item
name].  Buyer can forever say this was Paul Allen's [item name].  The
providence



On Thu, 12 Sep 2024, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

How do you prove it?  Kinda like Babe Ruth baseballs.


The closest that you can get is records of the serial number.
And statements of experts.
A signed statement by Abby Sciuto of his fingerprints on it, and that that 
was his DNA in the drop of dried blood where previous owner cut themselves 
on the sharp edge.

[cctalk] Re: auction starting in 50 minutes

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

"bought by Christies" might mean that individual employees, or corporate, might offer a 
paid "proxy bidding" service?


On Tue, 10 Sep 2024, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

The terms of sale indicate that Christie's employees are allowed to participate 
for themselves and if so are identified as such, but they get no special 
consideration if they do.


Unless there was specific mandate not to do so, I can imagine either a 
potential buyer or an employee initiating a "I'll give you 15% over what 
you pay, up to $100K, if you get it for me."

[cctalk] Re: auction starting in 50 minutes

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

"bought by Christies" might mean that individual employees, or corporate, 
might offer a paid "proxy bidding" service?

[cctalk] Re: auction starting in 50 minutes

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Tue, 10 Sep 2024, Paul Koning wrote:
And perhaps craziest of all, $189k for a 360/91 console display.  Just 
the lights panel, nothing more.


Well, that might be all thatthe interior decorators wanted, for hanging on 
the wall

[cctalk] Re: auction starting in 50 minutes

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Tue, 10 Sep 2024, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

Wow, someone paid $56k for a MITS ALTAIR.  And $945k for an Apple 1.  Not to mention 
$718k for an Enigma machine.  A bunch of things went for way above the estimate, while 
for others it's much closer.  One wonders why; I suppose a possible explanation is 
"because the auction house doesn't particularly understand the market for these 
things".


Any special provenance?  (Hitler's personal Enigma?, BillG's' Altair?, 
Steve's Apple?)


Or just multiple bidders on each item, unaware of more reasonable sources?
(I think that those prices are high, or the bidders were)

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

[cctalk] Re: Punch card info

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 9 Sep 2024, Bill Degnan wrote:

IBM 1951-54 IIRC.  I have a few early punch and reader docs.  They span
from just after WWII and into the early 701, 704, 650 days


Thanks
I got into unit record stuff in the mid to late 1960s.
But, my interests were a little esoteric, and I never really learned the 
mainstream DP stuff.


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

[cctalk] Re: Punch card info

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 9 Sep 2024, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote:


There is a 47 tape to card punch


I don't think that I ever saw one of those.
Was it IBM?
When was it available?


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

[cctalk] Re: Punch card info

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

The 447? stand-alone interpreter did reasonably high speed interpret/print


On Mon, 9 Sep 2024, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:

Perhaps you mean the 557?


I do, indeed.
Thank you
That was a unit-record machine that I didn't use much.


For my father's work, I mostly did keypunch, verify, counting sorter, and 
lots of simple FORTRAN..


At Goddard, I did my own punching, and put in time on the Gerber Data 
Digitizer (a graphic arts style table with etch-a-sketch controlled 
crosshairs and a foot pedal, connected to an 026 punch).  A little APL, 
and a lot of FORTRAN, particularly writing stuff to output to calcomp and 
Stromberg-Datagrphix plotters.  ("plodders")



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

[cctalk] Re: Punch card info

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Another minor detail about column alignment:

There was a variant of the 029 punch (I don't remember the specific model) 
that could interpret/print on already punched cards.  It printed 80 column 
aligned characters.  With a drum card, it could be set to skip some and 
only do the desired ones.


("Regular" models of 029 printed along the top only while punching)

(There was also a model of 029 for "verifying", where it read an already 
punched card while the operator was "punching" from the same data. If the 
key presses and data on thecards matched, then it would put a small notch 
on theend of the card.  Some "service bureaus" cheated, and used it to 
"duplicate" blank cards, to have cards that were already "verifiaction 
notched" before they were even punched.)



The 447? stand-alone interpreter did reasonably high speed interpret/print 
of decks of already punched cards.  BUT, it could only do 60? columns on a 
pass, and they were not column aligned.  It had a wire plug board to set 
which columns, printing positions, etc.



Thus, 447 was fine for cards handed to customers/managers, etc., but for 
programmers who wanted aligned interpreting of specific cloumns, as being 
more convenient than manually deciphering the pattern of holes, the 29 
variant was better, albeit slower.


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

[cctalk] Re: Antonio's call for donations (was LCM auction)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

I forgot to mention that as soon as it had been scsnned, the document was 
shredded.


Occasionally they screwed up and shredded documents before scanning.



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

[cctalk] Re: Antonio's call for donations (was LCM auction)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

cctalk is allowing attachments now?  I was under the impression that these
were deliberately disallowed and filtered for bloat reduction or safeguard
against possible malware distribution?
I'd personally prefer no attachments on cctalk rather just post a link to
somewhere they can be retrieved from if desired.


On Thu, 5 Sep 2024, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:

I noticed that as well, and was wondering the same.


You are going to think that I am making this up. (I am not that 
imaginative):


The VP of the college used Wordperfect to create a document that consisted of:
"The curriculum committee will meet Tuesday at 2:00 in room D252, instead of 
D233."
He put a blue horizontal rule (line) across the page below the message.
He printed it out on a color printer.
He signed it.
He scanned the paper.
He put that as an attachment to an email.
He used a Subject: line of  "FYI"
The body of the text of the email with the attachment was:
"See the attachment"
He sent the email to the faculty

(The paper was not quite aligned in the scanner, so the horizontal rule 
had a slight "stair-step")


The first item on the agenda was a state mandate that we should teach 
"Information Competency", in addition to a previous mandate of teaching 
"Computer Literacy".
He opposed it, saying that "ALL of our students and faculty are 
Information Competent and computer Literate"



He is not on this list.

In May 2013, I said, "Take this job and shovel it."

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

[cctalk] Re: Antonio's call for donations (was LCM auction)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

If you disagree, please turn your computers over to another list member,
put on a tin hat, and go somewhere else.


and, we come full circle back to the original question of how to turn your 
computers over to another list member.


On Fri, 30 Aug 2024, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:

You could've simply asked for this thread to stop, rather than using it as
an opportunity to broadcast your political opinions and issuing an
ultimatum to probably over half this mailing list to fuck off.
By the way, the earth is round...
Any idiot knows it's a torroid.


I looked at a map.  It is obviously a rectangle, not round.
But, Mercator and others came up with ways to project that rectangle onto 
the surface of a sphere.  Minor problem that Greenland comes out 
undersized on the sphere.
But, the sphere projection does have the toroidal aspect with a hole 
through the middle for an axis on which it could rotate.


From an engineering perspective, always wear the foil hat with the shiny 
side out.  If the dull side is out, it will act as an antenna, instead of 
a shield.

[cctalk] Re: LCM auction

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

We have our own non-theological religious wars, such as vi vs emacs.


On Thu, 29 Aug 2024, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:

Apple II vs. IBM PC vs. Commodore 64 vs. Atari 800 vs Radio Shack TRS-80
vs...


DOSPLUS vs NEWDOS-80
Electric Pencil vs. Scripsit

Pre-CP/M Electric Pencil vs TRS80 release vs Pennington versions (including PC)

. . .

[cctalk] Re: LCM auction

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Carnegie (and Gates) were only figuratively "buying their way into 
heaven".  I don't think that either did it for religious reasons.


Although most would assume that it is a religious issue, that was not my 
intent.  The specific example that I gave is non-religious.


"I have learned that no good can ever come from starting a discussion of 
politics, religion, or the Great Pumpkin."  - Linus


We have our own non-theological religious wars, such as vi vs emacs.

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

On Thu, 29 Aug 2024, Mike Katz wrote:

And then there's the story in the bible about Jesus throwing the people 
selling indulgences (and other things) out of the temple?😮


That kind of thing has been going on for thousands of years.  It predates 
Catholicism but became a part of the Catholic Church in the 11th and 12 
centuries.


This is not intended to start a theological discussion in any way shape or 
form.  I was just mentioning that buying your salvation has been a part of 
mankind for a long time.


On 8/29/2024 7:01 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

Hasn't he promised to give his money away...


Yes
He is a follower of Carnegie.  Ruthlessly make an enormous amount of 
money, and then "buy your way into heaven" by doing good deeds with a 
large part of the money.  Look at the Carnegie libraries.



On Thu, 29 Aug 2024, Paul Koning wrote:
In an earlier century, those schemes were called "indulgences" and were 
one of the main causes of the Reformation.


Martin Luther's post on the church door was, of course, completely 
inadequate to put an end to indulgences.


And there are other sorts of them still being created.  "Solar Renewable 
Energy Certificates" seem like an indulgence market.


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

[cctalk] Re: LCM auction

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Hasn't he promised to give his money away...


Yes
He is a follower of Carnegie.  Ruthlessly make an enormous amount of money, and then 
"buy your way into heaven" by doing good deeds with a large part of the money.  
Look at the Carnegie libraries.



On Thu, 29 Aug 2024, Paul Koning wrote:

In an earlier century, those schemes were called "indulgences" and were one of 
the main causes of the Reformation.


Martin Luther's post on the church door was, of course, completely 
inadequate to put an end to indulgences.


And there are other sorts of them still being created.  "Solar Renewable 
Energy Certificates" seem like an indulgence market.


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

[cctalk] Re: LCM auction

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Fri, 30 Aug 2024, Dave Wade G4UGM via cctalk wrote:

Hasn't he promised to give his money away...


Yes
He is a follower of Carnegie.  Ruthlessly make an enormous amount of 
money, and then "buy your way into heaven" by doing good deeds with a 
large part of the money.  Look at the Carnegie libraries.
'course, once you are a MULTI-billionairs, you can give a billion to 
worthy charities, and still be obscenely rich.
"Brewster's Millions" (both the original and the Richard Pryor/John Candy 
remake) are about the difficulty of spending more than a certain amount.




It's probably kinda expensive to put a tracking chip into every vaccine, . 
. . :-)
'course, once every Windows, Apple, and Android machines stay connected to 
the interwebs, all of the tracking data is already there.

It's not worth the storage to keep tracking data of CP/M and TRSDOS.

[cctalk] Re: LCM auction

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Any ideas on how to become a billionaire?


For a few decades, we have been saying that
"We must do whatever it takes to make Bill Gates into a millionaire."

[cctalk] Re: MS-DOS

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Fri, 16 Aug 2024, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:

It's also worth noting that the PC memory space is very much *not* divided
into fixed 64KiB segments (and ISTR it was originally a 512/512 split).
Segment registers have 16-byte granularity and a segment can straddle a
64kiB boundary just fine. This is used to some effect on the 286 to gain an
extra 65520 bytes beyond the 1MiB boundary in real mode.


A segment can, indeed, straddle a physical 64KiB boundary.

5150 disk IO had problems if the DMA buffer straddled a 
physical 64KiB boundary (Int13h return code 9)

Not hard to work around; just move the buffer
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58564895/problem-with-bios-int-13h-read-sectors-from-drive

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

[cctalk] Re: A little off-topic but at least somewhat related: endianness

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2024, Mike Katz wrote:
I am amazed at how many fresh outs I have met who really can't program their 
way out of a paper bag.


Advanced programming techniques don't help until they can actually 
successfully think about the problem.



I had a guy working for me VERY briefly, with a UC Berkeley degree, but he 
couldn't figure out how to do 3-up mailing labels on a daisy wheel 
printer!
(sequence not mattering becuse they were manually peele off and use for a 
mailing.)
He couldn't figure out any way to do it other than needing a way to roll 
the paper back to get back to the top for the next column!  not on THAT 
printer!
(simple way - read three records into memory, print them side by side, and 
then advance the paper)

He had a few other similar shortcomings.
I let him stay around until he peeled and stuck all of the labels, and to 
give him time to find another job.



I gave a final exam question on how to sort/sequence the records of a 
large file that was too big to fit into memory.
Several students who had gotten their start at the university insisted 
that the only way it could be done was to add more memory.
(simple way - read a memory sized block from the file and sort it; do that 
again, until you have a whole bunch of sorted shorter files, do a merge 
sort of those)


Another: "A client has a large file that is in order.  But each 
day/week/month, additional records are appended to it.  What's the best 
sort algorithm to get the file back into order?"
(simple 1: put the new records into a separate file, sort that; then do a 
merge sort between that and the main file.
simple 2: (if it isn't too large to manage) a bubble sort, with each pass 
starting at the ENF of the file where the new records are, and working 
towards th beginning, or a "shaker sort" that alternates direction.  The 
maximum nuber of passes is the number of records that were out of order.
(a "shaker sort" is the best sort algorithm for taking advantage of any 
existing order, such as a few random records being in the wrong place)


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

[cctalk] Re: A little off-topic but at least somewhat related: endianness

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

When I was teaching C, it was sometimes quite difficult to help students 
who had firm assumptions about things that you can'r assume.  Such as the 
sequence of operations in the multiple iterations examples that we both 
used.  I tried desperately to get them to do extensive commnets, and use 
typecasts even when they could have been left out.

[cctalk] Re: A little off-topic but at least somewhat related: endianness

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Ijust sent a post that agrees so thoroughly with what you just wrote that 
we even both used the same reference to Holub!


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

On Thu, 15 Aug 2024, Mike Katz wrote:


Fred,

That is true, Order of expression is undefined between execution points that 
is why the following statement can produce different results on different 
compilers:


A = 1;
F = A++ * A++;

Without the use of parenthesis the is no way for the user to know beforehand 
what the value of F will be.  The only guarantee is that when the before the 
next instruction is executed the all postfix operators will be evaluated 
prior to the start of the next C statement.


As a general rule rvalue expressions are calculated by the pre-compiler and 
not the compiler.  So the line:


ulDays  = ulSeconds / ( 60 * 60 * 24 );

Would be converted by the precompiler to:

ulDay = ulSeconds / 86400;

The calculation of the lvalue ulSeconds / 86400 will be handled at run time.

However, if ulSeconds is defined as a const it is possible that a smart 
precompiler will do the entire calculation and only the assignment will be 
done at runtime.


It is possible that the volatile keyword might cause the order of expression 
to be altered.


uint32_t * volatile ulpDMAAddress = 0x;  // Note this is a volatile 
pointer and NOT a pointer to volatile data.

uint32_t *ulpMyPointer;

ulpMyPointer = *ulpDMAAddress++ + *ulpDMAAddress++;

My mind is getting numb just looking at that code.  Suffice it to say that 
using multiple prefix/postfix operations in a single execution point is 
heavily deprecated because the actual results are implementation defined and 
my even be different depending upon what other math surrounds it.


Another implementation specific feature of C is the order of bits in bit 
fields.  They can be assigned from most significant to least significant or 
vice-versa.  It is totally up to the compiler.


As Allan Holub says C and  C++, in his book of the same name, gives the 
programmer "Enough Rope To Shoot Yourself in the Foot"





On 8/15/2024 6:45 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

It is not the hardware that is at fault.
If anybody else is to blame, it is the compiler.


On Thu, 15 Aug 2024, Paul Koning wrote:
More likely the language designers, assuming the compiler doesn't have a 
standards violation in its code.  In the case of C, the type promotion 
rules that were just explained are rather bizarre and surprising.  Other 
languages do it differently, with perhaps fewer surprises.  Some define 
it very carefully (ALGOL 68 comes to mind), some not so much.


C very explicitly leaves some thing undefined, supposedly to work with more 
machines, and Kernighan & Ritchie say that it is the responsibility of the 
programmer to create unambiguous code.
for example, evaluation of expressions in the lvalue might be done before 
OR after evaluation of expressions in th rvalue


Some other languages are much stricter on types, etc. and have fewer 
ambiguities.

[cctalk] Re: A little off-topic but at least somewhat related: endianness

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2024, Mike Katz wrote:
C has specific specifications for what is promoted when and how. They are not 
ambiguous just not known by many.
I worked for a C compiler company so I'm may be a bit more familiar with the 
actual C specs and how the compiler works.
However, I totally agree with you.  I heavily typecast and parenthesize my 
code to avoid any possible ambiguity.  Sometimes for the compiler and 
sometimes for someone else reading my code.


I will readily concede that ANSI C has fewer problems with ambiguous code 
than the K&R C that I learned.


But, for example, in:
X = foo() + bar();

has it been defined which order the functions of foo() and bar() 
are evaluated?  Consider the possibility that either or both alter 
variable that the other function also uses.
(Stupidly simpe example, one function increments a variable, and the other 
one doubles it)


As another example of code that I would avoid,
int x=1,y=1;
x = x++ + x++;
y = ++y + ++Y;
give 2, 3, 4, or 5?
is heavily dependent on exactly when the increments get done.

But, thorough careful typecasting, use of intermediate variables, etc. can 
eliminate all such problems.

'course "optimizing compilers" can (but shouldn't) alter your code.

If you don't explicitly specify exactly what you want, "C gives you enough 
rope to shoot yourself in the foot" (as Holub titled one of his books)



But, I've always loved how easily C will get out of the way when you want 
to get closer to the hardware.


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

[cctalk] Re: A little off-topic but at least somewhat related: endianness

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

It is not the hardware that is at fault.
If anybody else is to blame, it is the compiler.


On Thu, 15 Aug 2024, Paul Koning wrote:

More likely the language designers, assuming the compiler doesn't have a 
standards violation in its code.  In the case of C, the type promotion rules 
that were just explained are rather bizarre and surprising.  Other languages do 
it differently, with perhaps fewer surprises.  Some define it very carefully 
(ALGOL 68 comes to mind), some not so much.


C very explicitly leaves some thing undefined, supposedly to work with 
more machines, and Kernighan & Ritchie say that it is the responsibility 
of the programmer to create unambiguous code.
for example, evaluation of expressions in the lvalue might be done before 
OR after evaluation of expressions in th rvalue


Some other languages are much stricter on types, etc. and have fewer 
ambiguities.

[cctalk] Re: A little off-topic but at least somewhat related: endianness

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2024, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

I don't know about the VAX,but my gripe is the x86 and the 68000 don't
automaticaly promote smaller data types to larger ones. What little
programming I have done was in C never cared about that detail.
Now I can see way it is hard to generate good code in C when all the
CPU's are brain dead in that aspect.


It is not the hardware that is at fault.
If anybody else is to blame, it is the compiler.

int8 A = -1;
uint8 B = 255;
/* Those have the same bit pattern! */
int16 X;
int16 Y;
X = A;
Y = B;
will X and Y have a bit patterns of    , or    

If you expect them to be "promoted", you are giving ambiguous instructions 
to the compiler.

The CPU isn't ever going to know.

THAT is why explicit typecasting is the way to go.

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

[cctalk] Re: MS-DOS

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Specifically, place names of California.


On Sat, 3 Aug 2024, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

Yes, that's what I remembered, but I wasn't sure. Never been there,
not remotely familiar with the geography.

TBH I thought El Cap was in Yosemite and Yosemite was in Wyoming, but
on Googling, I think I was mixing up Yosemite and Yellowstone. TBH I
never consciously realised before that they were 2 different places.

Not my country, not my continent. I've lived in Africa, 3 different
countries in Europe, spent a lot of time and speak the languages of 4
more, but America is far off and largely unknown to me -- a
frightening semi-theocracy with guns and no healthcare.


Well, you should come visit, some time.

There's a lot to see.

[cctalk] Re: VCF West Aug 2 & 3 - Mountain View, CA

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Today was great!

Yes, they do sell tickets at the door.

but, . . .
They don't take CASH!
"Legal tender for all debts public or private", but they don't take it!


Lots of great exhibits


There was a substantial pile of Dell 5150 and 5160 laptops on the "FREE" 
table.  Dell 5150 is unrelated to IBM 5150, nor to a 3-day hold.




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

[cctalk] Re: VCF-West

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/

says:
"The full schedule of speakers and show attractions will be posted at a 
later date.


"Special attractions:
** Details will be added as they are finalized.  Please check back for 
updates! **"



Q: Will a schedule of speakers be posted?

[cctalk] Re: MS-DOS

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Rod Bartlett wrote:

I found Tim Peterson's old blog a while back which contained some interesting 
tidbits about the history of DOS from the original author.
http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/


I did find one unimportant error,
He said that DOS 1.10 supported both double sided, and 9 sectors per 
track.


That may have been what he wished for, but I'm pretty sure that what 
Microsoft actually released was DOS 1.10/1.25 supported double sided 8 
sectors per track (up from single sided in DOS 1.00),

(SOME OEM versions of 1.25 support 8" disks!)

and DOS 2.00 supported 9 sectors per track (Plus enormous other major 
changes, such as the "file handle" API, added to the existing "FCB" API.


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

[cctalk] Re: MS-DOS

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Warner Losh wrote:


The DEC Rainbow had initially a 2.01 and later 2.05 version.


Yes, some OEM licensers made significant changes, particularly when 
PC-DOS and "vanilla" MS-DOS didn't handle their disk formats.
And many companies started to use 3.5" drives or 80 track DD 5.25" 
drives before DOS 3.30, which was the first official support.  So, you 
may see various version 2.11 with "720K" drive support.

Including the IBM PC-JX


Later, there was 3.10 (from Ford, semi-bootleg) and then 3.10a and 3.10b
(from suitable


Letters appended were often modifications made by the OEM.

For example, Gavilan used MS-DOS version 2.11, but had their own format. 
It wasn't until revision J, K, or L that they supported the "ordinary" 
"720K" format.


Note that although the Gavilan came with either a 3.0" drive, or a 3.5" 
single sided drive, it supported 3.5" double sided. so, you could replace 
the drive with a double sided 3.5". Their drive bezel was proprietary, but 
some brands would fit without bezel, and the bezel form Gavilan's Shugart 
SA300 drive would fit Shugart SA350.

[cctalk] Re: MS-DOS

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Ironically, one of the colleges that I taught at was "Vista College". while
Windows Vista was still "in bloom", they went about changing the name of the
college to "Berkeley City College", in spite of my pleas to keep the name
"Vista" for a while longer, at least in parallel, to cash in on "Learn Wndows
Vista at Vista college".


On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote:

Perhaps they could have simply called it "Windows Vista College." They could
hand out diplomas that if you remodel your house too noticeably, they become
invalid and you're forced to be an undergraduate until you call in to get a new
one. Great at parties.


One of my proposals was to call the building that we were in, "Berkeley 
city College, Vista Campus",  which would let people include or not 
include "Vista" as needed.


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

[cctalk] Re: MS-DOS

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Rod Bartlett wrote:

I found Tim Peterson's old blog a while back which contained some interesting 
tidbits about the history of DOS from the original author.
http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/


thank you,
that is a very useful reference, although it is only part of the 
"elephant"

[cctalk] Re: MS-DOS (fwd)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Did not show up on the list, so I am forwarding another copy;
sorry if there are duplicates

On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:

I had not realized that 43 yrs. ago Microsoft purchased 86-DOS for $50,000
US not Cdn. money. With this purchase the PC industry, IBM's version
thereof, began. I remember using it to do amazing things, moreso than what
8-bit machines could do!


There are conflicting reports  that list that price as $25,000, $50,000, or 
$75,000, although there is suppoirt for each

for example:
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=99
"for $50,000 or $75,000, depending on how the cost is calculated."

The price that IBM paid Microsoft is stated variously as $25,000, $50,000, to 
$430,000


Great detail, but a few items are arguable:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-rise-of-dos-how-microsoft-got-the-ibm-pc-os-contract

"By most accounts, Nishi was the one most strongly in favor of Microsoft 
getting into the operating system world. Allen said in his autobiography Idea 
Man that Gates was less enthusiastic. Allen called Seattle Computer Products 
owner Rod Brock and licensed QDOS for $10,000 plus a royalty of $15,000 for 
every company that licensed the software."


"In Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM, Sams is quoted as saying Gates told him 
about QDOS and offered it to IBM. "The question was: Do you want to buy it or 
do you want me to buy it?" Sams said. Since IBM had already had decided to go 
with an open architecture, the company wanted Microsoft to purchase QDOS. 
Besides, Sams said, "If we'd bought the software, we'd have just screwed it 
up."


"According to Allen, under the contract signed that November, IBM agreed to pay 
Microsoft a total of $430,000, including $45,000 for what would end up being 
called DOS, $310,000 for the various 16-bit languages, and $75,000 for 
"adaptions, testing and consultation."




In contrast, the TV "Pirates of the Valley" made the false and absurd claim 
that bill Gates cold-called IBM to convince them to get an operating system!



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

[cctalk] Re: MS-DOS

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

After having extensively used every version of Pc-DOS and MS-DOS, 
including some obscure variants, and Windows 3.00, 3.10, 3.11, I used 
Windows 95, and then windows 98 and Wndows NT 4.51, and then SKIPPED to XP 
and then Windows 7.


I have yet to see any benefit to me of windows 8, 9, 10, or 11,
other than "Warnings" that I get on Windows 7 about it being discontinued.


I never used Windows 2000, Windows ME, nor Windows Vista.
Ironically, one of the colleges that I taught at was "Vista College". 
while Windows Vista was still "in bloom", they went about changing the 
name of the college to "Berkeley City College", in spite of my pleas to 
keep the name "Vista" for a while longer, at least in parallel, to cash in 
on "Learn Wndows Vista at Vista college".


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


On Tue, 30 Jul 2024, David Wise wrote:


I will never forget Windows ME.  Bleargh!

Dave

I wrote PC BIOS code for Phoenix Technologies from 1996 to 2023, we had to 
suffer through every Windows release as old stuff broke and had to be fixed.

From: Fred Cisin 
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2024 6:05 PM
To: David Wise 
Cc: Murray McCullough via cctalk 
Subject: Re: [cctalk] Re: MS-DOS

Sorry,
I can never remember which is which between Windows 2000
and Windows ME ("Millenium Edition")

On Tue, 30 Jul 2024, David Wise wrote:


I think Windows 2000 is NT-based.

Dave Wise

[cctalk] Re: MS-DOS

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:

I had not realized that 43 yrs. ago Microsoft purchased 86-DOS for $50,000
– US not Cdn. money. With this purchase the PC industry, IBM’s version
thereof, began. I remember using it to do amazing things, moreso than what
8-bit machines could do!


Ah, but there is so much more to the story, which deserves an entire 
chapter in the history.


More than you wanted to know? :  (but even more details available if you really 
want them)

Tim Paterson, of Seattle Computer Products was developing 8086 hardware, 
but CP/M-86 was delayed.  So, he wrote a temporary place-holder to use 
instead of CP/M-86 until CP/M-86 became available.  That was called 
"QDOS", "Quick and Dirty Operating System".  Later it became known as 
"SCP-DOS" and/or "86-DOS"


Then came the "culture clash" between IBM and Digital Research 
(previously known as "Intergalctic digital Research").  That has been 
documented elsewhere; some claim that there was not a culture clash, nor 
an error.


So, Microsoft (possibly Bill Gates personally) went down the street to 
Seattle Computer Products, and bought an unlimited license for 86-DOS 
"that we can sell to our [un-named] client"


Tim Paterson, who later opened "Falcon Technologies" and Seattle Computer 
Products both also retained licenes to be able to sell "the 
operating system".  Note that the version was not specified, as to whether 
such license would include rights to sell updated versions; that error 
(failure to specify whether future/derivative products were included) has 
been repeated elsewhere (cf. Apple/Microsoft)


Microsoft also hired Tim Paterson to maintain and update "MS-DOS".

Microsoft sold a license to IBM, where it became PC-DOS.
And, it was available through Lifeboat as "86-DOS"

In August 1981, when the PC (5150) was released, IBM started selling 
PC-DOS.  But digital Research was not happy with IBM selling a copy of 
their operating system. 
In those days, selling a copy was legal, if the internal code was not 
copied.  (hence the development of "clean-room reverse engineering")
It wasn't until the Lotus/Paperback Software (Adam Osborne) 
lawsuit that "look and feel" became copyrightable.


So, IBM agreed to also sell CP/M-86 IN ADDITION to selling PC-DOS.
. . . and sold UCSD P-System.

But CP/M-86 was STILL not ready, so everybody bought PC-DOS, many of whom 
planned to switch to CP/M-86 when it became available.

But, when CP/M-86 was finally ready, the price was $240 vs $40 for PC-DOS.
There are arguments about whether IBM or Digital Research set that price.
Although, if that price was IBM's idea, then why did Digital Research 
charge $240 for copies sold through other sources (such as Lifeboat)?



Initially MS-DOS and PC-DOS differed only in name and trivial items, such 
as "IO.SYS" and "MSDOS.SYS" being renamed "IBMBIO.COM" and "IBMDOS.COM"
When changes were made, Microsoft's and IBM's version numbers were 
separated.

Thus 1.00 was the same for both
IBM released PC-DOS 1.10, and Microsoft released MS-DOS 1.25
2.00 was the same for both
2.10 VS 2.11 (IBM needed trivial changes to 2.00 to deal with the 
excessively slow Qumetrak 142 disk drives in the PC-Junior and "portable"

3.00 was the same
3.10,   adding network support and the "network redirector for CD-ROMs
3.20 VS 3.21, adding "720K" 3.5" drive support
3.30 VS 3.31,  BUT 3.31 was the first to support larger than 32Mebibyte drives!
4.00 and 4.01  IBM/Microsoft did not provide third party vendors enough 
advanced warning, so Norton Utilities, etc. did not work on 4.00 (NOT 
4.00 did not work with Norton Utilities!)

5.00
In 6.00 each company bundled a whole bunch of third party stuff (such as 
disk compression) and each got them from different sources. 
When Microsoft's disk compression was blamed for serious problems caused 
by SMARTDRV, Microsoft released 6.20 (repaired and reliability improved 
from 6.00).
Then 6.21 and 6.22 as a result of Microsoft's legal case with Stac 
Electronics.



Please note that MS-DOS/PC-DOS ALWAYS had a version number, a period, and 
then a TWO DIGIT DECIMAL sub-version number.  THAT is what is stored 
internally.  Thus, 1.10 is stored as ONE.TEN (01h.0Ah), 3.31 is actually 
THREE.Thirty-ONE (03h.1Fh), etc.
If there had ever actually been a "1.1" or "3.2", those would have been 
01h.01h (1.01) and 03h.02h (3.02), etc.
"1.1" was NOT the same as "1.10", nor "3.2" the same as "3.20", otherwise 
VERY minor changes would be confused with serious changes, as happened 
when some people called 4.01 "four point one".



Later still, Seattle Computer Products was on the rocks.  There was some 
speculation that AT&T might buy it, to get the DOS license (and not have 
to pay royalties per copy!).  After some legal animosity, Microsoft did 
the right and smart thing, and bought Seattle Computer Products, thus 
closing that vulnerability.


Windows originally started as an add-on command processor and user 
interface on top of DOS. 

[cctalk] Re: Macintosh Plus clone

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:

I came across this today: “Electronics engineer builds 1986 Macintosh Plus
clone”.  Is there some reason one would want to do this? Not sure what the
point is but it proves it can be done!


You could write a small section of your book on David Small
Rather than recreate the whole computer, he created a cartridge to convert 
an Atari ST into a Macintoch emulator.

("Magic Sac", and "Spectre 128")

https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n6/mac_pc_on_st.php
https://lowendmac.com/2016/atari-st-magic-sac-spectre-128-and-spectre-gcr/

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred

[cctalk] Re: Pick system in Manitoba looking for a new home

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

It is apparently an LSI/PDP-11/2 with Pick operating system

On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:

what is this thing im up in lynn lake be down in wpg in a week witch is 2hr
drive from wpg

[cctalk] Re: Pick system in Manitoba looking for a new home

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

https://www.amazon.com/Pick-pocket-guide-library/dp/083063245X

On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:


On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
Would anyone like to rescue a vintage Pick minicomputer in Manitoba, 
Canada?

https://discuss.systems/@ahelwer/112836345012817998
A wide ask here so please boost: my grandfather is trying to get rid of an 
old business computer, and I was wondering whether any vintage computer 
people might want it. It was purchased for $50k from The Ultimate 
Corporation in the early 80s. This ran the Pick operating system, and my 
best guess is the hardware was originally manufactured by GE or Honeywell. 
It's about the size of a half-rack and currently lives in Brandon, 
Manitoba, Canada. It has sat covered in plastic in a chemical warehouse for 
the past 35 years. Where do people usually post stuff like this other than 
here? Thanks!


Sorry, no help with re-homing it.

Did you know that a publisher made a series of books called
" Pocket Guide"

They even had one for Pick, with the obvious title!

[cctalk] Re: Pick system in Manitoba looking for a new home

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

Would anyone like to rescue a vintage Pick minicomputer in Manitoba, Canada?
https://discuss.systems/@ahelwer/112836345012817998
A wide ask here so please boost: my grandfather is trying to get rid of an 
old business computer, and I was wondering whether any vintage computer 
people might want it. It was purchased for $50k from The Ultimate Corporation 
in the early 80s. This ran the Pick operating system, and my best guess is 
the hardware was originally manufactured by GE or Honeywell. It's about the 
size of a half-rack and currently lives in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. It has 
sat covered in plastic in a chemical warehouse for the past 35 years. Where 
do people usually post stuff like this other than here? Thanks!


Sorry, no help with re-homing it.

Did you know that a publisher made a series of books called
" Pocket Guide"

They even had one for Pick, with the obvious title!

[cctalk] Re: the 1968 how to build a working digital computer

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Besides slide rules, etc.

If you have an analog computer consisting of a 5 gallon bucket, and a 3 
gallon bucket, and plenty of water available, 
What are the steps for a PROGRAM to get a result of 4 gallons of water in 
the 5 gallon bucket?