- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Repair workshop 9/28 & 9/29
by Jeffrey Brace 22 Sep '19

22 Sep '19

On Sun, Sep 22, 2019 at 3:22 PM Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > Trying to get there on Sunday. No way I can go Saturday but ill know in a > day or two if I can be there Sunday. > No problem. I will save a spot for you. > Tony > > Sent from my iPhone > > > On Sep 22, 2019, at 3:00 PM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < > vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > > > We have twelve signed up so far. We have room for more. > > Here is the link: < > > > https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pLLZqlotJBRhPYNQtIMZ70FoW6Yw2ycCj5I… > >> > > > > Evan won't be there Sunday because he is doing a family thing, but I > will. > > > > For Saturday lunch we will get pizza from a different place, my local > > favorite: Attilio's of Tinton Falls. I don't know why we didn't get pizza > > from here before. It is only 7 minutes away. > > > > For Saturday dinner, we will cook burgers again. > > > > For Sunday breakfast, we will be going to the OB diner and meeting at > 9AM. > > > > -- > > ========================================= > > Jeff Brace > > Vice President > > Vintage Computer Federation > > -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President Vintage Computer Federation

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new acquisition: Intel SBC 80/10+SBC-108
by Herb Johnson 21 Sep '19

21 Sep '19

> It seems to be "industrial strength" - I'm sure these were priced above the affordability threshold for most hobbyists... Glenn, suffice it for me to say, as a digital engineer from the 1970's, that while Multibus systems when new, were not cheap; in the era, early digital computing technology (microprocessor or minicomputer), wasn't cheap either. And in due course, Multibus and other industrial-bus microcomputers, became "hobbyist"; and are hobbyist today, notwithstanding some legacy industrial uses still going on. But just because some 1970's computers were industrial, doesn't mean they didn't have a "hobby" impact or had early hobby activity. Just as college students "hacked" on expensive computers at their colleges, so did engineers and techs do the same at the time - either at work or when these systems became surplus. And today, there's a number of people "hobbying" on Multibus computers; and other such systems too. Certainly so, on the minicomputers preceding the microprocessor-based "boxes". I think to someone born after say 1995, all these "rows of boards in ugly boxes" look the same - S-100, Multibus, VMEbus, STDbus, SS-50, OSI, DEC, etc. So it disappoints me, when I see any of them referenced as "non-hobby" for one reason or another, past or present. It's my era to defend. 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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Slightly off topic - USAF to retire LCC systems using 8" floppy drives.
by Martin Flynn 20 Sep '19

20 Sep '19

https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/180409-nc3-is-t… "The LCC Block Upgrade is an overall modification effort that replaces multiple LCC components to include a modern data storage replacement for floppy disks. We expect a contract to be awarded this year with production in 2018 and deployment in 2019"

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] new acquisition: Intel SBC 80/10+SBC-108
by Michael Thompson 20 Sep '19

20 Sep '19

> > Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2019 18:45:16 -0400 > From: "Glenn Roberts" <glenn.f.roberts(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] new acquisition: Intel SBC 80/10+SBC-108 > > I've acquired an Intel SBC 80/10 and the associated SBC-108 I/O RAM > expansion board plus a card cage. These appear to date to '76 and, as I > understand it, were the beginning of what eventually became branded as the > Intel Multibus (later an IEEE standard). These have ceramic Intel chips. > Look to be in pretty clean shape. I've found manuals/docs on the internet > for the SBC 80/10 but not the expansion board. > * Glenn > The manual for the SBC-108 is here: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/intel/iSBC/980277B_SBC_104_Memory_IO… Decades ago I ported CP/M 3.0 to that processor board. I had a framebuffer for the console and 128k of RAM. I used the parallel port to control the upper memory address lines for the memory paging. -- Michael Thompson

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Sep Repair Workshop 2019 - 9/28 & 9/29
by Jeffrey Brace 20 Sep '19

20 Sep '19

Signup here for the September 28 & 29 VCF Repair workshop: < https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pLLZqlotJBRhPYNQtIMZ70FoW6Yw2ycCj5I… > -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President Vintage Computer Federation

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] ESIX System V
by Kenneth Seefried 20 Sep '19

20 Sep '19

TL;DR: Definitely worth preserving. If no one else, the guy at https://virtuallyfun.com/ is into various versions of i386 Unix. Long Version: I worked for a hardware OEM and some related firms in the golden days of SVR4 on i386. I ran daily pretty much all of them, installed them daily/weekly, beat my head on the desk frequently. We had source trees for virtually all of these which we spent a *lot* of time pouring through. Code was written and debugged. My $DAYJOB was driver/integration/testing/admin work on this stuff. > "*ESIX* - Esix System V Release 4.0 unifies all major versions and > derivatives of UNIX such as AT&T System V Release 3.2, Berkeley Software > Distribution (BSD) 4.2 and 4.3, SCO UNIX 3.2, and Microsoft XENIX. In > addition, key features of Sun Microsystems SunOS? have been incorporated. " > > That's pretty much a generic description of System V release 4 for i386. It was obviously replacing SVR3, Xenix & SCO. Hard to not pull in 4BSD. The reference platforms for SVR4 were i386 and SPARC, so yeah, key features of SunOS were in there. > Everex did more than distribute it; they started with AT&T SysV, wrote > most of the drivers, and integrated the BSD extensions. > > They might have written the the drivers for some Everex specific hardware, but unless you have some evidence, the Everex source code I saw was pretty much stock SVR4/i386. Certainly nothing I'd call "most" of the drivers. Or even "a few". I think there was was some Everex motherboard specific tweaks (didn't they have their own spin on a memory or cache controller? Something like that...I forget.) and a disk controller or two. But it's been nearly 30 years, so I could be wrong. And exactly what BSD extensions did they integrate that weren't part of stock SVR4? I don't recall that "#ifdef ESIX" was a thing. Wow. If all of that is true, then this would seem to be a very desirable > unix system. Maybe even the holy grail of unixes. However the devil is in > the details. Maybe it had some flaws? I hadn't heard of it, but with those > collection of features, you would think it would be extremely well known > (maybe it is, maybe I'm cloistered) > > Historical Context: Given a couple of competent Unix savvy hackers, it was pretty easy to bring up the reference SVR4 on any random, suitably generic i386 (486, 586) motherboard and common I/O boards; there were drivers already for the common chipsets and a lot of (E)ISA devices. And there were a number of consultancies who would do the port for you for a modest fee. So lots of vendors paid a few bucks so they could say "see....we got Unix too!". Good times. ESIX was an "you-get-an-A-for-effort" SVR4/i386. They had some really good, dedicated folks who worked very hard. They tried to take it up a notch above a generic SVR4 distro. Everex wanted to be considered more "workstation" than "bog standard generic PC box". But they never had very many folks working on Unix, and never with many resources. There were a tiny handful of technical support people (like, 3-4 maybe), which was rough (even for Unix savvy customers). For me, it wasn't the holy grail. YHGMV. Compare it to Dell SVR4, which clearly had much more investment and actually had things they did that no one else did: a reasonably well resourced support organization (mostly of the time), tuned drivers, a nifty and actually useful auto-configuration system, an X11 "office suite" of apps (admittedly, not that great), a curated selection of Open Source tools (like gcc, perl, emacs, tex) on the distro tape at a time when downloading and compiling such things wasn't always trivial (and, like Solaris 2, you otherwise had to pay for a C compiler). That was my daily driver for years...really nice for the time. Still turned out to not be a viable product in the long run, but that's a different story. KJ

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new acquisition: Intel SBC 80/10+SBC-108
by Glenn Roberts 19 Sep '19

19 Sep '19

I've acquired an Intel SBC 80/10 and the associated SBC-108 I/O RAM expansion board plus a card cage. These appear to date to '76 and, as I understand it, were the beginning of what eventually became branded as the Intel Multibus (later an IEEE standard). These have ceramic Intel chips. Look to be in pretty clean shape. I've found manuals/docs on the internet for the SBC 80/10 but not the expansion board. Intel marketing Brochure: http://www.dvq.com/docs/brochures/intel_sbc_80_10.pdf Pictures: SBC: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Wce5PACtp6JkkP5BA SBC-108: https://photos.app.goo.gl/UeRDbjihvvZnm7ZH7 cage: https://photos.app.goo.gl/o5rBtYn7kSxmuCjS8 Wondering if anyone has any particular insight, memories, experience, advice to share. Is this a particularly rare find? I'd like to power it up - I believe it has a simple monitor in ROM. Tx. * Glenn

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I'm New
by Ryan Burke 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

Hello all, My name is Ryan and I am glad to be a part of VCF. I've been collecting for over a year now and it quickly became my favorite hobby. I was turned onto this by some people I know in a discord server, and I'm glad to find some hands on help to some of my problems I've been having. I am looking forward to attending this workshop because there is nothing interesting going on in Maryland related to vintage computing. I've collected some interesting stuff over the past year including some IBM 5150s, an Xt and an AT, multiple C64s, and an Apple II. My interests are pretty much anything earlier than 1990 but I can't pass up a good deal. As I said earlier I'm pretty new to all this, but I'm getting the hand of soldering and I've fixed some small stuff and replaced chips in a C64. I'm quite eager to learn! Thanks for reading Ryan

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] I'm New
by Ryan Burke 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

Matt, This Apple ][+ functions great actually, I just needed to clean it. The monitor works perfectly as well.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] I'm New
by Ryan Burke 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

Thanks Matt I have an Apple ][+, in great shape. I've got all the paperwork and original sales reciepts for it, and some software. It has the Apple /// Monitor and stand. I've fixed 2 C64 so far, almost done with another 2. The IBMs I have take up a lot of space, I need to find more room

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