[cctalk] Re: Lunar Lander, bug
> Fascinating - and there was a video game made by Atari called Lunar > Lander which also tried to put a LEM safely on the surface. At the U of Alberta in the graphics terminal room in the General Services Bldg., next door to the I/O room (pick up and drop off cards and printouts from the MTS Amdahl), there was a short rack with a ~10U PDP of some flavour connected to a rack mount GT-40 graphics terminal. There was a version of lunar lander you could download into the PDP from the MTS system and play off- line (i.e. free). You used a light pen to control everything, and the goal was to land successfully beside the only McDonalds on the moon. --lyndon
Margaret Hamilton Guardian interview.
Another of the un-acknowledged people in the upcoming July 29 'celebrations'. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/13/margaret-hamilton-computer-scientist-interview-software-apollo-missions-1969-moon-landing-nasa-women --lyndon
Re: Email delivery protocols / methods.
> MMDF MMDF was[*] an MTA, not a protocol. (See also PMDF.) --lyndon * Is anyone still running MMDF? The last production shops I had my fingers in that ran it was circa 1996. That was when SCO was still a thing, and MMDF was its MTA of choice.
Re: Kids these days...
William Donzelli via cctalk writes: > It is a real company, but if you look into the SEC papers, there is a > LOT of shady stuff there. Its sole job may be to move money in and out > of the Ukraine. I was going to shy away from those thoughts, but ... * a "new" startup, since 2009? * actual patent *numbers* to back up the claims? It all looks pretty bogus.
Re: 1983 UBC PDP-11 Unix tools distribution
Al Kossow via cctalk writes: > On 3/6/19 10:14 AM, Lyndon Nerenberg via cctalk wrote: > sigh.. before this goes farther into the weeds, the tape > came from the University of British Columbia's Biosciences Data Center > > there is a short bio of Bill Webb at > http://archive.michigan-terminal-system.org/people > > I guess there aren't enough Unix greybeards around here any more. > The UBC tape, like Usenix tapes, Yale E editor, and the RAND editor tapes > were just things you knew about. I stumbled across Bill Web during my MTS days, well before I discovered UNIX. I used more than a few of his MTS programs that leaked out of UBC to UQV. --lyndon > >
Re: 1983 UBC PDP-11 Unix tools distribution
Brent Hilpert writes: > On 2019-Mar-05, at 10:07 PM, Richard Loken wrote: >> TRIUMF was using /11s for cyclotron control I believe, that's not >> where you anticipate UNIX showing up. >> But was it Unix or something else like RT-11? Or was it a VAX? > Well, I don't know for certain, I was just trying to recall where I was > aware of there being /11's around campus. > I had the impression from somewhere at the time that /11s were running > the cyclotron, or were present in some significant capacity at TRIUMF. When I toured SLAC at Stanford in the late '90s I was surprised to see the miles and miles of coax from the collider's sensors/detectors terminating at a long row of PDP-11s. Turns out the '11s had custom- designed boards that filtered out all the crap from the collider events before passing the "useful" data upstream for analysis. (This is based on questions I asked the grad student conducting the tour.) I never thought to ask which OS the '11s were running. Maybe TRIUMF was doing something similar? --lyndon
Re: Cybernex APL-100 terminal
On Mon, 23 Apr 2018, Norman Jaffe via cctech wrote: Does anyone in the group have access to documentation for the Cybernex APL-100 video terminal? All that I've been able to locate is a 4 page brochure for it; they were originally made in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have vague memories of using one of those back in my Athabasca U days. Let me ping a couple of people and see if there are remnants. --lyndon
Re: Multics Lives
> On Apr 20, 2018, at 8:45 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk > wrote: > > It seems to go unmentioned here, so here you are. One guy have set up > a public Multics site. More than one ;-) $ ssh mult...@orthanc.ca HSLA Port (d.h000,d.h001,d.h002,d.h003,d.h004,d.h005,d.h006,d.h007,d.h008,d.h009,d.h010,d.h011,d.h012,d.h013,d.h014,d.h015,d.h016,d.h017,d.h018,d.h019,d.h020,d.h021,d.h022,d.h023,d.h024,d.h025,d.h026,d.h027,d.h028,d.h029)? Attached to line d.h000 Multics MR12.6f: Frobozz Magic Abacus Co. (Channel d.h000) Load = 5.0 out of 90.0 units: users = 5, 04/21/18 1356.4 pst Sat That gets you a guest login to play with. There are no plans right now for individual accounts. I'm also working on setting up a public MTS host ...
RE: Non-Yahoo MTS Mailing Lists
Ok well I have checked and it looks like Lyndon is on the yahoo MTS list, but his mail supplier may be filing as spam. Umm ... his email supplier is him. I've been running my own mail servers since the early 1980s. If anything is getting bounced, it's because my email servers brand the content (not list) as spam, no better or worse then they brand any other traffic. (Hint: spamassassin and xbl.) --lyndon
RE: Non-Yahoo MTS Mailing Lists
Lyndon, Seeing as the folks who set up the original distribution are on the Yahoo list it's the best place to ask questions. I assume you don't want to set up a Yahoo account? Facebook perhaps? I did fight my way thought the Yahoo interface to get onto at least one of the MTS groups via the mailing list interface. But after falling off that a couple of times, for unknown reasons, I gave up. And as I mentioned, the Yahoo Groups web interface is just too horrible to contemplate. And no, I don't do Facebook, either. But that wouldn't make a difference in this case. I pine for the simplicity of mailing lists. Then again, Yahoo, as co-instigators of DMARC, are ensuring the end of mailing lists as we've known and loved them for the past three decades. --lyndon
Restoring MTS *FS distribution tapes onto a UNIX system
The answer to my previous question lives in the source code. The D6.0A MTS distribution doesn't have the source on disk, so the files need to be extracted from the *FS tapes. On an MTS system, that's a pain in the ass. Given the DRIVER file from the distribution, has anyone tried extracting the 6.0A distribution tapes into UNIX file hierarchy, based on the hinted component/sub names? I'm thinking just the raw files - I don't care that they're EBCDIC at this point, so no content conversion required. --lyndon
Non-Yahoo MTS Mailing Lists
Are any of you aware of an MTS mailing list that lives outside of the execrable Yahoo groups environment? And if not, is there any interest in starting one? Meanwhile, if there are any MTS hacks on the list, I have a question: When running *SAV or *SVW, what are the labels the system is expecting for the FS tapes? I tried the obvious - FS2001 for the FS2001 tape prompted for - but no luck there. Then again, maybe I'm not labeling the tapes properly. This is under Hercules. hetinit -d fs2001.aws FS2001 MTS doesn't cut it. I also tried running *lbh against that tape (to give it the same label), but no luck there, either. The MTS operator's guide doesn't have anything to say about daily/weekly backups, other than the cryptic notes on the *SAV and *SVW files, and I can't find anything else as I dig through the rest of the online system docs. $HELP ? --lyndon
Re: OT: the death of shortwave / Re: Hallicrafters S-85
> On Oct 19, 2017, at 8:39 PM, Marc Howard wrote: > > That said, it is much easier to do coast to coast now with WebSDR. Go to > websdr.org and choose a receiving site. They have way better antennas than > you or I and you can (cheat) pick one near the person your talking to. WTF does that have to do with playing *radio*? :-P
Re: OT: the death of shortwave / Re: Hallicrafters S-85
> On Oct 19, 2017, at 7:15 PM, Ed Thierbach via cctalk > wrote: > > I'd be interested in a classic computing net as well. I have 40 - 10 > meters available on HF. Our area is lagging in digital repeater coverage, > so no Fusion or DMR or D*Star for me just yet. This would be cool. Since it's computing-related, an HF digital mode would be appropriate, no? Preferably something I could chat on with my 5W-into-a-mag-loop-on-the-balcony setup :-P Seems appropriately stone aged for the computers we're talking about ;-) And the bit rate sounds about right for matching the various card/paper-tape/&c readers. --lyndon (VE7TFX et al)
Re: What's the matter with kids today (Was: The origin of the phrases
> On Oct 6, 2017, at 12:08 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk > wrote: > > I have long held that while initial creation of software can benefit from > providing the programmers with the absolutel latest hardware, that at least > one significant stage of debugging and optimization should be done on the old > stuff that "the rest of us" use. If Microsoft would trade hardware with us, > and use some of our "obsolete" stuff, then they might learn to write RELIABLE > compact, efficient, and fast programs. Instead, the approach to all > performance complaints is "throw hardware at it". Mark Crispin was a great proponent of a minor variant of this philosophy. He used to rail on about how IMAP client and server developers should be forced to develop and debug their code using 9600 baud network links. It pissed him off to no end how lazy the (then) current crop of MUA developers was, trading off the fallacy of "limitless" bandwidth against smart algorithms and a true understanding of IMAP's semantics. I have fond memories of a few late nights we had, both going on about the Kids These Days ;-) --lyndon
Re: Subject: Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle, the first author to write a novel on a microcomputer
> On Sep 11, 2017, at 7:38 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk > wrote: > >> Was Jerry Pournelle the FIRST to write a PUBLISHED NOVEL on a >> MICROCOMPUTER? Yikes! Talk about SHOUTING. > > It is EMPHASIS of individual words and phrases. > THIS IS SHOUTING! FIGURE OUT THE DIFFERENCE! Zippy the Pinhead HAS ESCAPED! I'm wearing a ZOOT SUIT with a REET PLEAT!!! --emacs
Re: Solaris on PPC?
> On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:30 PM, jim stephens via cctalk > wrote: > > IIRC Jobs killed the effort. Been a long time ago to recall. I don't think > it died before he was involved. > > We had the x86 Solaris, and the office was there at least thru Solaris 2.7 > days. I also know the kernel lint had been done by 2.3 time at least, FWIW, > which was pretty impressive. Made you up your game for kernel mode modules. > My unit had modules to run tests on all available cores and on some > programmable block of memory to certify that the systems we were running on > actually activated the cores and they were available to the system. I don't think Sun was really interested in pushing the OS on anything other than Sparc. I remember hitting the Sun booth at Interop (IIRC) in 1993 and pushing them hard for licensing and pricing for the then new 386 release. I was looking for a campus-wide license (300+ 386 workstations) for a new university I was helping spin up. Over the course of the conference (several days) I hit up at least four sales critters at the booth trying to get some hard info on licensing and pricing. Not one of them gave a sweet flying fsck. So I dumped a couple of $million into SGI Indy workstations and Challenge servers, instead. --lyndon
Re: Why women were the first computer programmers
> On Aug 23, 2017, at 9:27 PM, Josh Dersch via cctalk > wrote: > > Well, this is the stupidest thing I've read today. "Do Not Feed The Troll" should go without saying. Really.
Re: xv and VMS
> The motion carries. > > Retirement as an attempt to gain more free time just doesn't work. You people obviously don't know Richard. He will hrumph and blunderbuss his way through local space-time until reality bends to his requirements. Also, the word "free" is never a descriptor of "time" in his universe. I keenly look forward to the sheer anarchy he will inflict on the countryside now that he is no longer constrained by a (very) petty bureaucracy :-) --lyndon (who had the joy of working with Mr. Grumpy Bastard for a few years, long ago and far far away) P.S. He's also the only person on the planet I would (and did) entrust my Drake Twins with (speaking of Classic Hardware!). P.P.S. Maybe now he'll have time to fire them up and get on the air again ;-)
Re: mc68010+mc68451 Unix source?
> On Oct 3, 2016, at 8:19 PM, Phil Budne wrote: > > I have an ancient Unix system made by ProComp in Switzerland that has a > 68000 CPU, 4 MB RAM and that 68451 MMU. Unfortunately, I didn't get a hard > disk > or system media for this oldtimer :( It ran a port of 7th edition Unix as well > as some System III variant. Would surely be nice to see Linux running on > that machine ;) Please don't defile it like that.
Re: Ill-considered complaints [was: RE: early networking (was Re: G4 cube (was Re: 68K Macs with MacOS 7.5 still in production use...))]
Actually, Mr. Cook, the standard for the last 35 years or so has been to change the subject line, with the old subject in SQUARE BRACKETS with the characters "was: " prepended. Not the standard, but a convention. The standard is documented in RFC 5322 section 3.6.4 (and dates back to RFC822). This isn't anything new. In the Usenet world, nn and trn made agressive use of these headers to thread discussion chains. Any good MUA will use them as well. Note that in the email world, 'popular' and 'good' are mostly disjoint sets :-( --lyndon
Re: Subjects, Topics and Threading
How is sending a new email any different than replying / changing subject line? A brand-new (not reply) message does not carry the References: header chain from the previous thread. For threading-aware MUAs, this makes sure the new conversation doesn't get buried in the old thread. Or possibly even ignored, as some MUAs can kill/ignore portions of threads based on specific message-ids in the References header. --lyndon
Re: Source for server lift/hoist?
> On Jul 4, 2016, at 5:26 PM, ste...@malikoff.com wrote: > > Also nice but I doubt the front wheels at 3.5" dia would slip under a rack > base so the equipment mass can be lifted directly inside the rack frame. No wheels are going to slip under a bolted down rack frame.
Re: Excessive Bounces
> On Jul 2, 2016, at 2:37 AM, Jay West wrote: > > Of those bounces, almost 100% of them were due to DMARC/DKIM mechanisms. I > view DMARC/DKIM as less than useless. First, they are far from universally > implemented - so most valid email is not DMARC/DKIM "protected". Second a > large percentage of the spam in the world *IS* DMARC/DKIM "protected". Amen. DMARC is an abomination that must be made to die. DKIM is useful, in an advisory sense. DMARC just outright breaks decades of standardized email protocol behaviour.
Re: what's vintage? was Re: Latest addition: A bondi-blue iMac
> On Jul 1, 2016, at 11:33 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > We're entering another interesting period of time. For those who want a > desktop PC to read email and surf the web, the display could well turn > out to be the most expensive component by far. Interestingly, the RPi could result in the resurrection of the X Terminal :-) At work I have a monster desktop that basically serves as just that. With the RPi3 it's now practical to use it to drive the display, letting me turn the desktop beast into a VM host. VM host in the kvm/qemu sense, although I do plan to have it host a VM/370 instance, just to annoy the kiddies at work :-)
Re: Wanted: Ann Arbor Ambassador terminal
> On Jun 24, 2016, at 6:22 PM, Richard Loken wrote: > > I have an Ann Arbor Ambassador here with the original owner's manual. > It has been sitting on my shelf for 15 years or so, I must say the > always evil, "It worked when I put it on the shelf" and I am not about > to open a can of worms by plugging it in. It is guaranteed to need a re-capping of the power supply. This I know from experience.
Re: Quadra 660AV what's with the "PowerPC" label?
> On Jun 15, 2016, at 4:47 PM, Mouse wrote: > > The BSDs just sit there and work, for the most part. The major thing I > see them lacking is a PR department. And thank $GOD for that. It was P.R. that created (and perpetuates) Linux.
Re: Real Mice (was real keyboards ...)
> On May 31, 2016, at 7:25 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Some scroll-wheel mice also employ > the wheel as a third-button--just push down on it. No, that "button" in the middle is B2, as anyone from the original days of the 3-button mouse knows. The perversions that Microsoft foisted on the masses aside, on a real three button mouse, the buttons are numbered 1 through 3, from index to ring finger. The bastardized Microsoft 2-button mouse has no canonical mapping to the 3-button variant.
Real Mice (was real keyboards ...)
Since we are moaning about real hardware, is there anything available these days that comes even close to the Logitech ergonomic three button mouse from the mid-late 1990s? The sculpted to fit in your hand model? Before the scroll wheel abomination had been invented? They were a joy to behold, let alone use. I suspect most people here still use the middle mouse button on a regular basis; I'm surprised there isn't more hue and cry about their demise :-) I spend a lot of time using Plan 9, and - on Unix-ish systems - acme. Both of those are simply untenable without B2 on the mouse. The enthusiasts have found a few holdouts - primarily an HP 3-button mouse. But it's made of plastic, and has no mass. The Logitech had *body* to it. You *knew* where it was going when you moved it, and it was comfortable to use all day long. Surprisingly, the closest replacement I found for the big beast was a (Kingston?) bluetooth travel mouse I bought about 10 years ago. It was quite tiny, but that meant it fit very comfortably under my palm. It had the eeevil scroll wheel, but it was very small in proportion to the middle button, so as to be just slightly annoying. And the mouse was dense! It had mass, even before you fed it the pair of AA batteries. Sadly, the buttons on it have packed it in. I think I'll hold a wake for it this weekend ;-) --lyndon P.S. Who has the patent on the logitech mouse? Maybe we can get a Kickstarter campaign going to buy it and roll out another production run!?
Re: Keyboards and the Model M (was Re: NEC ProSpeed 386)
> On May 31, 2016, at 5:38 PM, Pete Turnbull wrote: > > Yet I had a colleague whose keyboard was made with all-blank caps. Very > interesting when he needed help, or got me to demonstrate a problem - which > luckily were very rarely. My other Cherry keyboard I love is some sort of "gaming" model. That means they print the key legends on the *front* of the keys, not the tops. I know not why. The tactile feel of it is even better than the WASD (it very closely mimics the Courier 3270-clone keyboards), but I just can't use the damn thing because my eyes have no point of reference, and I need that even when I touch type. (When I get out of sync, specifically.)
Re: Keyboards and the Model M (was Re: NEC ProSpeed 386)
> On May 31, 2016, at 5:10 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > I used one enough to have worn a visible depression in the space bar > with my right thumb. I still have a few of the keyboards around. Another thing I love about the WASD keyboards. Because the lettering is molded all the way through the keycap, I can't wear the letters off. I've had a couple of other compact format Cherry keyboards over the years that I loved, but I always managed to pound the legend off them within a year or so. I'm not that good of a touch typist that I can work with a blank keyboard :-P
Re: Keyboards and the Model M (was Re: NEC ProSpeed 386)
>> >> Hehe, I use my Model M mostly with SGI's that have PS/2 ports. So, I'm >> right there with you. The only sane modern keyboards are the WASD 'CODE' series. I have the 87 key model: http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/code-keyboard/code-87-key-mechanical-keyboard-mx-green.html As someone who has spent years pounding on Cybernex XL83, Ann Arbor Ambassador, and Courier 3270-clone keyboards, mine feels right at home. Cherry MX (green) mechanical key switches, LED backlit keycaps, and the best part: flip one dip switch and CapsLock is remapped to Control in hardware. No more fscking around with OS-specific configs to undo *that* brain damage :-) They aren't cheap, and they're worth every penny! --lyndon P.S. I, too, wish I had APL keycaps for mine. You can get custom keycaps made, but they don't have the through-the-keycap backlight.
Re: Need Rec: Book to teach about computers and BASIC at an eight year old level
> On May 27, 2016, at 4:28 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > > And THAT is the best part of everything. I.e. get derailed! Lose complete track of what you set out to do. Discover the unexpected, instead. Break the kit! Make LEDs burn out. Then figure out why. That's what learning is.
Re: Need Rec: Book to teach about computers and BASIC at an eight year old level
> On May 27, 2016, at 4:18 PM, Tapley, Mark wrote: > > but it has a lot of potential to get distracted from what I think you are > aiming for. And THAT is the best part of everything.
Re: Need Rec: Book to teach about computers and BASIC at an eight year old level
> On May 27, 2016, at 3:04 PM, Ali wrote: > > Yes, of course that makes assumptions on my knowledge level as well > which does not quite extend to Forth or APL. So learn with him, already!
Re: Need Rec: Book to teach about computers and BASIC at an eight year old level
> On May 27, 2016, at 2:52 PM, Jay West wrote: > > At the risk of being flamed... I'll mention that if the kid is more visually > driven, you might try introducing him to an Arduino Uno or similar. Something > he can see the results of his code in lights and dials. And ultimately, the whole purpose of the RPi was for this sort of education. There are lots of Pi-based kits out there created for this very purpose. E.g.: https://www.adafruit.com/products/955 https://www.adafruit.com/products/1538 https://www.adafruit.com/products/3058 http://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-3-ultimate-kit.html raspberrypi.org has tons of material aimed at that age group, both software and hardware hacking. For Arduino: http://www.canakit.com/arduino-professional-kit.html http://www.canakit.com/sparkfun-inventor-s-kit-for-arduino-with-retail-case.html With Arduino, you need a separate host computer to write/download the code on/from. But the Arduino kits are much more oriented towards physical interfaces, and I defy you to introduce me to an eight-year-old who doesn't want to build robots! :-)
Re: Windows use in medical spaces (Re: vintage computers in active use)
> On May 27, 2016, at 2:04 PM, Ali wrote: > > I would say very few. You have to remember critical systems are not running > a general windows system i.e. people are not surfing the web on them and > installing the latest games recommended by friends from facebook. Windows on > its own is very stable. And nobody - *ever* - plugs a USB stick into them. Or puts them on a LAN with machines that people shove USB sticks into.
Re: Need Rec: Book to teach about computers and BASIC at an eight year old level
> On May 27, 2016, at 1:57 PM, Dave Wade wrote: > > Those who write APL programs ae sadists, and those who like fixing them when > they go wrong are masochists > ... Though I believe Iverson wanted to call it "The Programming > Language" I was going to suggest he introduce the lad to a wide range of languages, especially non-procedural ones, and outliers such as Forth and APL. It's much easier to grasp the concepts (and joy) of things like functional programming if you're exposed to them before confirmation bias limits your acceptance of the world.
Re: beige rant (was Re: IBM 5150 with red case on ebay)
> On May 13, 2016, at 7:44 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: > > "undercut"??!? > I seriously doubt that the B&H "Black Apple" was cheaper. But, it had B&H's > credibility backing it up for skeptical school boards, who bought tons of B&H > AV equipment, but didn't know what a "personal computer" was. > >> I do recall now the local elementary & jr. high schools gobbled them up. >> (The B&H variant.) > > I knew a few teachers who got B&H Black Apples into the classroom, and THEN > were able to get the school board to let them buy Apples, because they were > cheaper, "just as good", and "completely compatible!" with the B&H. Maybe the outfit I was working for was lowballing the B&H price, but we definitely had the price advantage over all the Apple dealers. Now part of that might have been because we were the only Apple(-ish) dealer in Ft. McMurray AB, and the only alternatives were the *very* greedy Apple dealers in Edmonton (a five+ hour drive south).
Re: beige rant (was Re: IBM 5150 with red case on ebay)
> On May 13, 2016, at 7:34 PM, Jason T wrote: > > Apple made a deal with > well-known educational vendor B&H, who made black cases with a special > A/V box on the back (a cluster of RCA connectors) I don't remember the stack of RCA connectors, but yeah, Apple definitely rode on the coat tails of Bell & Howell 16mm movie (and 35mm film strip) projector sales :-)
Re: beige rant (was Re: IBM 5150 with red case on ebay)
> On May 13, 2016, at 6:46 PM, Tor Arntsen wrote: > > They weren't even clones, they were the real deal. Apple II Plus > computers produced by Apple for B&H for a time. Apple manufactured an OEM Apple ][+ ? Really? I was pretty sure the B&H's were an independent product. Apple licensed them to try to step on the clone market. I can't fathom Apple letting someone else sell their own product (modulo case colour) at a price that undercut the official product. I do recall now the local elementary & jr. high schools gobbled them up. (The B&H variant.)
Re: beige rant (was Re: IBM 5150 with red case on ebay)
> On May 13, 2016, at 6:11 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: > > Ever see one of those black computers from Hell and Bowel, that seem just > like an Apple? I sold them in the early 80s. My memory is very fuzzy, but ISTR they were a licensed clone of the Apple ][. And they actually worked. --lyndon
Re: Interfacing with HP-HIL
On 2016-05-05 6:47 PM, Mouse wrote: faster, lower power, maybe even cheaper, etc. TTL could never claim "lower power" :-)
Re: Keys - Non-Ace was RE: ACE Key codes (xx2247 etc.)
> On Feb 25, 2016, at 5:01 PM, Jay West wrote: > > But I did find there is apparently a service http://key.me where you take a > picture of your key with their app, and they mail you a copy (or if there is > a kiosk of theirs in your area, you can do it real time there). Ooh! I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of *their* customer database :-)
Re: OK, one more question about sending email TO an old VAX
> On Feb 24, 2016, at 8:48 PM, Richard Loken wrote: > >AU purchased an 8600 some time around 1985? >The 8600 was upgraded in place to an 8650 >The 8650 was traded in on an 8820 for $1.2 million >Some time in the very late 80s a VAX 4000-300 was purchased >Circa 1990 the 8820 and the 4000 were traded in for two VAX 4000-500s >The VAX 4000-500 were upgrade twice in place finally to a 505A >The VAX 4000 was finally shut off around 2010 > > So, no, only the 785 suffered the indignity of a slow death in the rain. My brain is cooked. I left AU in the fall of 1991, no? At that time I was pretty sure the 8650 was still in play. I'm sure I would have remembered the Digital Road Crew showing up with a semi-trailer full of new hardware. What I can't recall is whether we had ditched auvax by the time I left. I remember the 3B4000 abomination occupying the same floor space the 785 hung out in. The same neighbourhood, at least. The train of 3B2's that replaced the 3B4000 abomination took up space closer to and parallel to the PACX. Closer to the tape vault. In hindsight, the 3B4000 could not have replaced auvax. My job was to move all the app's across, so both would have had to be running concurrently for most of the time I was there. Are there any pictures remaining of us (me, Ross, Ronnie) nuking the 3B4K that night? Campbell might be in there, too. I lost my (re-)collection ages ago :-( --lyndon
Re: OK, one more question about sending email TO an old VAX
> On Feb 24, 2016, at 5:11 PM, Richard Loken wrote: > > Multinet has an SMTP listener and it expects standard SMTP addresses. > If you cannot deliver such an address locally then you must look at how > you have configured the Multinet email server, if you want to forward > to a decnet only machine or to All-in-One (rather than a VAXmail user) > then you will need to create some rewrite rules but Multinet should > deliver to a local VMS mailbox without clever manipulation. Good grief, Charlie Brown! AllIn1 had it's own Bitnet-style routing syntax on VMS? I am so glad I never knew that. Did PMDF run until the end of VMS at AU? I don't recall you ever mentioning the UCX stuff. Of course you know I stayed as far away from VMS as was humanly possible :-) (And just when did the 8650 get retired? Did it spend any time keeping auvax company behind the woodshed?) --lyndon
Re: The AT&T 3B2 is still proprietary
Heh. You obviously never net the 3B4000. s/net/met/ :-P
Re: The AT&T 3B2 is still proprietary
If I ever get my hands on a 3B2 of any size, I would happily hook it up to a Honda three-wheeler and drag it along a rough gravel road until it was nothing more that unrecognizable lump if raw steel. I hated using a 3B2. Heh. You obviously never net the 3B4000.
Re: Non-binding-breaking Book scanners (Was: Looking for PDP handbook
> On Feb 19, 2016, at 5:04 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: > > It wouldn't matter for most of my books, but I have just a few where if you > break the spine, then I will break your spine. If anyone is still maintaining a "fortunes" file, please add the above. --lyndon
Re: NiCd battery replacement in vintage computers
> On Feb 6, 2016, at 5:31 PM, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote: > >> Voltage? Recharging circuits? Current sinking capacity. It's not >> always a 1:1 mapping. > > Sure, but does it really matter in a typical battery-backed-up RAM or RTC > application seen in computers? I swapped the dead original NiCd pack for > a compatible NiMH one in my DECstation 2100 some half a year ago and the > machine seems rather happy about the replacement. It all depends on your definition of 'typical'. In most cases, a NiMH coin cell will happily replace a NiCd one. But it's not always a 1:1 mapping. It never is if 'recharge' is uttered in the sentence. You need to spend a minute looking at the circuit before declaring MH <==> NH. It's no different than when you make any other part substitution. But when you're mucking around with something that *feeds* power into a circuit, it's worth paying a bit of attention, lest surprises come along.
Re: NiCd battery replacement in vintage computers
> On Feb 6, 2016, at 5:03 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > I see all the talk about NiCd cells--does no one use NiMH nowadays? Why go > with the toxics? Voltage? Recharging circuits? Current sinking capacity. It's not always a 1:1 mapping.
Re: MTS
I didn't see that you had posted to any of the yahoogroups Hercules groups, and you may be lurking, but wanted to mention them. I can post all of the hercules groups or send them offline if you need. I'm aware of them, and have scanned a couple of the groups (how I found pointers to the VM six-pack). But the Yahoo Groups interface is so repulsive as to be unusable (by me, anyway). --lyndon
Re: MTS
You may want to look at: http://archive.michigan-terminal-system.org/ By sheer coincidence, I happened across that site this morning. Very useful! Source is included in the tapes. If the SHOW bits to which you refer were shared amongst the consortium, and predate the release of D6.0, they're quite likely in there somewhere. SHOW was Keith Fenske's personal account at the UofA. It hosted the most astounding collection of games and other nifty bric-a-brac. His version of Space War (for the 3270) probably sucked down more student CPU soft dollars than all their combined course work did!) --lyndon
MTS
There have been a few references to MTS over the past couple of months that led me to suspect people are running it under Hercules. I did some poking around a while back and managed to find some tape images (bitsaver, I think), and did some cursory reading of the release notes. I think there might be enough there to IPL and perform a basic installation, but what immediately caught my attention was the mention that sites had to purchase ASMH from IBM, which leads me to believe the public distributions don't contain an assembler. I cut my teeth on *real* computers on the U of Alberta's Amdahl running MTS, and I can't possibly imagine using it without an assembler. So my first question is: is anyone running MTS under Hercules from these public images? And if yes, question 2 is: which languages are included? One of the main reasons I would like to get MTS running would be to play around with the scheduler code. I remember some changes that were introduced circa 1981 that - I thought - destroyed the interactive response time of the system. E.g. APL went from being a joy to practically un-usable, IMO. I've always wanted to poke around in there and see if I couldn't fix it. And to get thoroughly esoteric and obscure, what are the odds that someone out there squirreled away an archive of SHOW:? from UQV-MTS? --lyndon
