- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Kickstarters that I am backing
by Jeffrey Brace 15 Jun '20

15 Jun '20

16 days left: Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1985-2001: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vanburnham/supercade-a-visual-history-… 23 days left: The 8-bit Wars: http://kck.st/3dgsJuW -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member, VCF East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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3M DC 600a Data Cartridge backup
by Sentrytv 14 Jun '20

14 Jun '20

Is there anybody local to me in Edison New Jersey, that may have a way of reading a 3M DC 600a data cartridge, from a back up in 12/1991 ? It is a back up of a Maxum 286 computer I believe it was running DOS and Windows. I don’t know what program was used to back it up. I believe it an external drive was used to back it up. Unfortunately the 286 motherboard is completely corroded and I do not have the original tape drive. If anybody can help out, I’m just curious to know what’s on the tape and maybe we can put the contents onto a USB drive. I’d be willing to do this at some point when we have a workshop here in New Jersey. Mike R. Sent from: My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.

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Books for free
by Jeffrey Brace 13 Jun '20

13 Jun '20

Someone is giving away these books: PDP11 Processor Handbook (1981) HP 2000C: A Guide To Time-Shared Basic (1972) A set of BSD 4.4 manuals. VCF already has them, so if anyone wants them, then send me a private message and I will send you his e-mail address. He is in Bergen County, NJ. -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member, VCF East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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Integrated circuit needed for Amstrad
by Sentrytv 13 Jun '20

13 Jun '20

I’m trying to find out if anybody near me, here in Edison New Jersey, would have an IC. Sanyo part number LM33464G - 12 I only need one and if somebody does have one and I can pick it up great. contact me off list please. Mike R. Sent from: My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Altair cant jump
by David Gesswein 13 Jun '20

13 Jun '20

Not an 8080 guy so somewhat generic suggestions. > Ive done the kill-the-bit game and played music to an AM radio. > I assume these jump. Can you tell any difference in what jump used or where your running from in memory? I assume 8080 restarts with interrupts disabled so the serial port can't be triggering an unhandled interrupt.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Altair cant jump
by William Dudley 13 Jun '20

13 Jun '20

Either a bad CPU or bad memory (more likely). If you (or the cpu) can read memory reliably single stepping, but not at speed, that suggests memory accesses at speed are flakey. If there's a way to cut the clock speed down, I'd try that. If it runs reliably at lower clock speed, then memory access is your problem. I can't explain failing to jump when single stepping. Bill Dudley retired EE This email is free of malware because I run Linux. On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 11:54 PM Jeffrey Golas via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > So I’ve been battling my (new to me) Altair for some time trying to get a simple serial echo program to work. Im entering all code via the front panel. Im not 100% this thing is working though it mostly seems to be. Ive done the kill-the-bit game and played music to an AM radio. > > Current config is Altair with rev0 main board, aftermarket (beefy) power supply, a CCS 16k ram board, and a Cromemco TU-ART serial board. Nothing else. > > The problem Im having is the echo program which Im mainly transcribing from the TU-ART manual goes off the rails. It runs differently every time Ive run it, and usually starts spitting out junk data after press one key (its supposed to read one char and send it back). It makes no sense to me. Stack is set right, and one change I made was changing from a JR to JMP as the 8080 doesnt do relative addressing. Ive verified numerous times its all correct. > > Single stepping it for the most part seems to work, and today I manually single stepped through the entire process only to have the single character come through properly. If I run it, it goes nuts and dumps data. Ive confirmed the status byte its reading from the board is correct and changes as it should. > > I may have discovered the issue though: it wont jump. I even tried a simple few bytes to have it store FF and 00 to memory to verify its working(it does), but doing a C3 00 00 to jump back to zero, it single steps right past that. I think this may be my problem, but how do I fix that? Bad cpu? > > TIA! > > Jeff G aka Bags

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Altair cant jump
by Jeffrey Golas 13 Jun '20

13 Jun '20

So I’ve been battling my (new to me) Altair for some time trying to get a simple serial echo program to work. Im entering all code via the front panel. Im not 100% this thing is working though it mostly seems to be. Ive done the kill-the-bit game and played music to an AM radio. Current config is Altair with rev0 main board, aftermarket (beefy) power supply, a CCS 16k ram board, and a Cromemco TU-ART serial board. Nothing else. The problem Im having is the echo program which Im mainly transcribing from the TU-ART manual goes off the rails. It runs differently every time Ive run it, and usually starts spitting out junk data after press one key (its supposed to read one char and send it back). It makes no sense to me. Stack is set right, and one change I made was changing from a JR to JMP as the 8080 doesnt do relative addressing. Ive verified numerous times its all correct. Single stepping it for the most part seems to work, and today I manually single stepped through the entire process only to have the single character come through properly. If I run it, it goes nuts and dumps data. Ive confirmed the status byte its reading from the board is correct and changes as it should. I may have discovered the issue though: it wont jump. I even tried a simple few bytes to have it store FF and 00 to memory to verify its working(it does), but doing a C3 00 00 to jump back to zero, it single steps right past that. I think this may be my problem, but how do I fix that? Bad cpu? TIA! Jeff G aka Bags

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MS DOS/Win 95/IDE Help
by W2HX 13 Jun '20

13 Jun '20

Hi friends, Sorry for the long email that follows: I am working with an old military PC model SAIC V2LC. The PC is a 486 and is from around 1992 give or take a couple of years. Probably 1995 latest. The computer has one 3.5" floppy and a removable IDE hard drive in a removable carrier. It also seems to have a SCSI controller, but I would have to see what that is all about as the BIOS does not show anything about that so it may require a driver that I may be unlikely to find. I am interested in getting this operational again, and I want to use it for RTTY (radio teletype) and will therefore need an audio card for it. But not much else. A few simple programs and that is all I need. I would love to get windows 95 running on this if possible. My understanding is they ran windows 95 originally. Some picture: https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/1.JPG https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/7.JPG https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/9.JPG https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/10.JPG IDE HD and carrier, the hard drive in the carrier is a Conner CFS540A: https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/20200124_094111.jpg https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/20200124_094131.jpg https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/20200124_094115.jpg https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/20200124_094118.jpg https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/20200124_094105.jpg The carrier and hard drive were NOT original to this PC. They were obtained a few years after I bought this PC but it is for this style computer and fits fine. This computer has a nicad battery pack and it can also run on a crap-load of alkaline C-cells. I was able to figure out how to get power to it (28V military standard) and I was able to power it up and got some information from the bios. https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/0606201450.jpg https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/0606201449b.jpg First attempt to boot in with the replacement HD installed I got the following: https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/0606201449.jpg I then went into the BIOS and realized that the number of cylinders in BIOS would not allow the 1050 that is called for on the Conner drive itself so I figured I would not be able to boot from this drive. I went on ebay and found someone selling "bootable" 3.5 inch drives and they arrived today. The computer does boot on the floppy (whoo hoo!) and it boots says "Windows 95" but a dos prompt appears. https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/0612201957.jpg The only file on this floppy is command.com nothing else. However, after booting on this floppy, I attempted a DIR C:\ and received this: https://w2hx.com/x/SAIC%20V2LC/c-drive1.jpeg However, attempts to do much else on the C: drive met with Abort, Retry, Fail. After about 10 minutes, I could no longer do a directory on the drive either and is now pretty dead. This is ok, I don't think there was anything of value on it. So why the email? I am looking for help. First of all, I am thinking I should replace the HD with one of those SD to IDE converters. Does anyone have experience with a particular model that has a decent chance of working with an old 486? I don't need a lot of space, and I realize I am probably limited to this 504 MB maximum partition size. Again, that is likely plenty for me so at first, I wouldn't worry about trying to bust through that with resident programs etc. at this time (maybe later). With an SD card, I will be able to better transfer programs and files from my other windows machines (win 10) to this one. However, I don't have any way to sysgen (or whatever it was called back then) to create a bootable system. Second question: Is anyone out there willing to create for me an SD card (maybe two, one as a backup?) that will boot DOS and has windows 95 on it? I am happy to pay for licenses, hardware, SD card and effort involved to get this going. In the most ideal world, maybe someone with this kind of experience could acquire the SD-IDE adapter, connect to their own 486/win95 and then generate the SD card? Ship the whole mess to me for installation on my end? If not, just a bootable, configured SD card would be hugely helpful. I just figured that I should use the same SD-IDE device as the person who created the SD card to maximize my chances of success. I haven't played with a 1995 computer since, well, 1995. But my DOS skills (if you can call it that) are sure to come back to me. I will also mention that some other people have suggested I put a simple linux on it. And I think that will be a phase 2 of this project once I can get win95 working. I haven't done much with unix or derivatives since probably 1993-1994 (SCO iirc) and before that early 1980s. Last question. I will need an audio card. I believe back then the "sound blaster" was sort of the industry standard. Does anyone know have a known working condition they would like to sell? If not, here is one that would probably work, but would prefer to support the delinquencies of list members: https://www.ebay.com/itm/382732938335 Any and all help deeply appreciated. Thank you! 73 Eugene W2HX

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Adata PC100 256MB memory and more
by Bob Flanders 13 Jun '20

13 Jun '20

Hi, I recently found some old pc100 and ddr2 memory. I could chuck it, but I thought that it might be something that might interest someone. Does anyone want it? Let me know and I can send it to you. Regards, Bob Flanders [image: Photo on 6-8-20 at 3.03 PM.jpg] [image: Photo on 6-8-20 at 3.02 PM.jpg] [image: Photo on 6-8-20 at 3.01 PM #2.jpg] [image: adata1.jpg]

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OT: All-In-One Color Laser Printer
by Herb Johnson 12 Jun '20

12 Jun '20

about OT: Color Laser Printer Recommendation Dave McGuire posts: > Very nearly universally, ink jet printers are garbage. I concur, conditionally. I'd call them disposable. I buy one every few years, half price when that model is superceeded. I use them to scan 11 X 17 documents. Not for printing, the heads clog up! They die, plastic parts break. I replace it, long after it stops printing. I haven't replaced ANY inkcarts, which cost HALF the sale price of the printer. And the new printer has more features than the old. Thus: disposable printers. I have an Epson WF-7520 to dispose of now; it's busted and clogged of course but still scans. My average inkjet-printer+ink costs as a result: about $50/year. New strategy: print once/twice a week, see if I can stretch out the printing. This will cost me a set of $70 inkcarts to continue; I'm several months in. > my main color printer is an HP Color Laserjet 5550DTN, > Either way, I would not recommend buying one new. I concur, on practice and brand. Thrift stores or surplus sales or maybe recyclers provide laser printers cheaply, tens of dollars. Maybe Craigslist? Freecycle? HP supplies abound on eBay. HP printers work for DECADES. I've used HP Laserjet II's and III's until the scanner motors die; that's 1990's tech, last used in *2018*. Those, I can fix. Hey: vintage tech! We are back on topic! ;) My daily B&W laser printer (and my wife's) are both HP LJ 4300's. I bought a new old stock toner cart on ebay for $18 *delivered*. My funny story: my winning bid on a cheaper toner-cart was canceled, when the seller realized their shipping cost was more than their selling price. > [story of outrage about high costs of toner carts] The inkjet-producer strategy used to be referred to as "give away the razor, sell the blades". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_model includes a reference to "printers". Re: Advice on All-in-One color Laser Printer I have two color laser AIO's which I never use. Paid several tens of dollars, used, years ago. HP CM2320blahblah, HP CM1312blahblah. Only 8 X 11 flatbed scanner. But nice color. Used color carts abound on eBay. I print in color when needed, not often in 2020. Caution: there's a hundred slightly different brands of HP color laser printers, with dozens of different toner carts. Some carts are quite small, you need four of them for color. And the carts (like the inkjet ink tubs) have smart-chips in them which tell the printer "throw this cartridge out when it's half empty". Solution: buy copied chips that say "I'm full, use me up!". Change the chips, not the toner cart. And I have some refilling supplies too. This is what it takes these days, to keep from throwing money at computer-printer companies. Inkjet ink, they say, is the most expensive liquid in the world. I have to jam microcontrollers *into toner carts* to get full use of them. And use decades-old tech, to save money and get reliability and repairability. Surprisingly, this doesn't bother me much. again: we are back on topic. Regards, Herb Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info

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