June 2017 - vcf-midatlantic

Head align Tape
by Duane Craps 15 Jul '18

15 Jul '18

>>> 7 track or 9 track? The Univacs are pretty old even for "vintage". Head alignment tapes are not track specific. They have one track the width of the tape and are used to adjust time delays to time align the bits coming off the read head when reading the alignment tape. Then a "scratch tape" is used while writing all ones to adjust the write delays while looking at the read amps. We used the same alignment tape for 7 and 9 track units. Duane On 6/17/2017 11:40 AM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > 7 track or 9 track? The Univacs are pretty old even for "vintage". On 6/17/2017 11:40 AM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > On 06/17/2017 11:37 AM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote: >>> UNIVAC 1540 Magnetic Tape Unit...I wonder if anyone has a 800 BPI, >>> NRZ Master Head Alignment Tape (skew tape) to donate to VCF. >> 7 track or 9 track? The Univacs are pretty old even for "vintage". >> >> Also, as Dave McGuire noted, a lightly-used tape from a known-good drive >> will be useful. In the floppy-disk world, I use several diskettes each >> from a known good drive to validate "alignment". > That wasn't me. But yes, that can be useful for rough validation. > >> Seems to me, there's likely several boxes of mag-tapes in the inventory. > Yes, I brought a few boxes several years ago. > > -Dave > v

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] COBOL: vintage vs. legacy code
by VAXman＠tmesis.org 15 Sep '17

15 Sep '17

"Joseph S. Barrera III via vcf-midatlantic" writes: >On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 7:53 PM, Jeffrey Jonas via vcf-midatlantic < >vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: > >> Java and all its variants and environments, > > >I've been writing Java for almost 20 years and fully expect to be >writing in it for another 10. I've been writing assembly for 40+ years and fully expect to be writing it for another 10+. ;)

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WTB: DECbrouter
by systems_glitch 05 Jul '17

05 Jul '17

Anyone have a DECbrouter they want to sell? This is a DEChub 90 module. Also looking for a v.35 and/or RS-232 cable for it. Thanks, Jonathan

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Upcoming July VCF Workshop Signup now! - 7/15 & 7/16
by Jeffrey Brace 03 Jul '17

03 Jul '17

The next VCF workshop will be on July 15 & 16. If you are interested in attending, then please signup: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16G0w7Z5y15B2uWh-NKItmVnoJF-f3NIIFQD… -- ======================================================== Jeff Brace ======================================================== <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> Virus-free. www.avast.com <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] The next Great VCF workshop July 15 & 16, 2017
by Blatboy 30 Jun '17

30 Jun '17

Alas, I now have a big freakin' deadline on July 17. You'll be having fun at the workshop. I'll be cramming. I took my name off the spreadsheet. I'm crossing my fingers my luck will be better for the August one. :) Walter http://www.jwalterhawkes.com http://www.blatboy.com like to know where/when I'm playing? Click here <http://www.blatomaster.com/mlist.php> to sign up for my list, and let the babble begin.

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Radio Shack Model II rescue
by Joseph Oprysko 30 Jun '17

30 Jun '17

There is a Radio Shack Model II that needs to be rescued. It's in Flushing, NY. If I was able to drive that far, I'd pick it up myself. Is anyone available in the area who would be able to pick it up? Thanks, Joseph Oprysko -- Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot. Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do. Normal Person: So you go surfing? Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot... Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level. Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?

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looking for intel 4040 programs
by Herb Johnson 30 Jun '17

30 Jun '17

> So far the only [4040 programs] I know of are Herb Johnson's stuff at > http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/intel440_roms.html You're welcome. Also consider http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/int_upp.html which describes the Intel UPP programmers, operated by a 4040. Their code is locked up in 4001's. They are operated by an Intel 8-bit system. http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/a04.html A simple cross assembler. Pro-log's "The Designer's Guide to Programmed Logic" has how-to-code 4040 examples. I have copies from two years, 1972 and 1977. Copies are available for a modest fee. Yes, I charge fees. MOst use of 4004 and 4040, were in products for industry. The sources were never released for those. Disassembly is informative. The 4004 and 4040 were controllers and so most any code was special purpose. I suppose, you could try to find old Intel user archives - they had a small collection of 4-bit and 8-bit programs as part of their User Library. Many of Intel's eight-bit and 16-bit programs have been recovered in the last few years. But Intel lost interest in their 4-bit development products by the Multibus era. What's your plan? Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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Colossal Cave Adventure on AMC website
by Douglas Crawford 30 Jun '17

30 Jun '17

Maybe old news, but here goes: Rick Adams made a web version of the game for AMC: http://www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire/exclusives/colossal-cave-adven… It has a nice green screen CRT look. FYI It has a single input line "Next ?" - not quite like a terminal. (Dummy me I was hitting ENTER expecting it to scroll and thought it was broken) from: http://rickadams.org/adventure/

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] vcf-midatlantic Digest, Vol 20, Issue 29
by Kenneth Seefried 30 Jun '17

30 Jun '17

From: Dave McGuire <mcguire(a)neurotica.com> > I didn't say it was impossible, I said it was pretty tough to do. And I said it wasn't. It wasn't in the old days if you knew what you were doing and it definitely isn't now in the 95% of everything is Ethernet/IP world. > We've all seen those interfaces, and those of us (myself included) who > have used them have run up against the same old problem of driver > availability, OS version dependencies, etc etc. Some of us were and are capable of dealing with those issue and routinely do. > In fact the first widely-deployed router that was capable of routing > IP on a T3 at wire speed while handling BGP was an IBM RS/6000 7012-320 > with a synchronous serial card in it, bundled by IBM as the 6611 Network > Processor. I'm quite familiar with the 6611. Awful things to build large networks with (I did) unless you really, really needed SNA/APPN weirdness that it took Cisco a while to figure out (I, regrettably, did). But, yes, commodity hardware. Lot's of IBM network network gear is "IBM [RT,PC,PS/2,Power] + ARTIC card" under the cover. That said, I believe a properly configured Wellfleet BLN could handle T3 routing + BGP before the 6611 (in 1991?). The Wellfleet BCN certainly could, but I think production BCNs were delayed till after the 6611 shipped. I was building out a worldwide Wellfleet-based network at the time (1100 routers?), but some of the details have faded. Wellfleet had the worst user interface ever conceived (SiteManager aka SiteMangler), but we deployed tons, including some interesting FDDI->FDDI routing scenarios (so the bandwidth was there). Let's not stroll into the minefield that was Wellfleets OSPF implementation.... Those were heady days. > But this is not the norm by any stretch. Perhaps not the norm by Cisco sales numbers, but that's kinda like saying *BSD doesn't exist because Microsoft. - IBM sold a lot of 6611s. For a long time. - Internet IMPs were Honeywell DDP-516s - we've been doing routing on commodity hardware for a long time. - Nokia sold tens of millions of bog-standard rackmount ATX PCs (later CPCI) running FreeBSD (relabled IPSO) as firewall/routers with optional V.35/X.21, HSSI, ATM & FDDI interfaces. I still use a Nokia/Sagnoma sync serial card from an IP440 in my lab. - Most of the earlier Juniper line are repackaged PCs running FreeBSD (nee JunOS). - SnapRoute is a Linux-based routing platform that AT&T has vetted for 5G network routing on commodity hardware (http://about.att.com/story/white_box_collaboration.html) - etc., etc., etc. And that ignores the whole Software Defined Network (SDN) trend which is predominately OSS+White Box Hardware. Little guys like Google, Amazon & Facebook are betting on that. > The fact that it can be done, and was very occasionally done, isn't really the point. Sure, when 'the point' becomes cherry-picking whatever allows you think declare yourself 'right'. Par for the course, as they say.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] KIM-1 find (was:The next Great VCF workshop July 15 & 16, 2017)
by Jeff Galinat 29 Jun '17

29 Jun '17

On 6/29/2017 9:00 AM, Chris Fala wrote: > $20 KIM-1?!?!?!? I don't think jealous is a strong enough word. Let me > know if you ever get tired of it! LOL Sounds like your priorities for > going to this event are in order. :-) Have a good time. > > Chris > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: *Jeff Galinat via vcf-midatlantic* > <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org > <mailto:vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org>> > Date: Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 7:18 AM > Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] The next Great VCF workshop July 15 & > 16, 2017 > I won't be able to make it as the 16th is the Sussex County Hamfest, > last year I scored a $20 Rev-b Kim-1. > Regards, > Jeff Galinat > Thanks Chris, The guy said the KIM-1 didn't work but I figured that for $20 I would hang it on my wall if I couldn't fix it. I brought it home, applied power, hit reset & it worked fine. I entered the clock program from the "First Book of KIM" and it worked as expected. The only thing I can think of think of is that the seller mistook the SST switch on the keyboard for a power switch since it is labeled ON/OFF and he didn't know that you had to hit reset before it would do anything. Anyway, there is always lots of interesting stuff at the Sussex hamfest. Regards, Jeff

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