- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Weekend workshop report
by Mike Loewen 11 Jun '17

11 Jun '17

I worked on two projects at the museum, this weekend: my recently acquired Eagle IIE micro and the museum's HP 2117F display system. The Eagle is a 4MHZ Z80 system (CP/M) with 64KB RAM and SS 5-1/4" drives. The display was out of adjustment, with a "doubled" presentation. A quick tweak by Ian on one of the video pots fixed that, and I resoldered the leads to the reset switch which had been inexplicably cut by a former owner. Nice bright and clear display (green CRT), passes internal diags. The HP 2117F is a circa 1983 mini, with a hardware floating point processor module. I pulled the power supply and checked the inside of the top cover for the infamous black form: yep. It hadn't quite started to disintegrate, but it was just a matter of time. I removed the foam and glued a plastic shield in its place. The power supply voltages were close, but I adjusted them to spec. The system wasn't completing its self-test, and didn't seem to be recognizing its RAM. It turned out to be a missing ribbon cable which is supposed to connect the RAM boards (3 boards of 256KW each) to the controller board. I pulled a donor cable from our ugly 2113E hangar queen and the memory tests now pass. I also replaced 3 broken plastic toggles on the front panel with parts from the 2113E. I showed Evan how to toggle in a short program from the front panel to make the lights dance, Cylon style. To paraphrase a line from the movie, "Firefox": you MUST think in octal. :-) The 2117F is missing a couple of crucial controller cards to connect to the peripherals in the cabinet: the HP-IB interface for the hard disc, the 7970B tape drive interface, and the interface for the 13037C disc controller. Fortunately, the 2113E has the requisite HP-IB card (12821A) so it may be possible to check out the HP-IB drive in the future. Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

2 1

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Found: VMS Hobbyist CDs
by VAXman＠tmesis.org 11 Jun '17

11 Jun '17

Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic writes: >On 06/03/2017 11:21 PM, Jim Scheef wrote: > Neil, > Could you pull ISOs >of a couple of the CDs before you take them to IA? > Jim > >I'm using my Linux box to see if I can copy the entire CD to an image. I >don't know how well this will work but it won't take much space. http://tmesis.net/OpenVMS_Hobbyist/

5 4

Diner for Sunday AM
by Evan Koblentz 11 Jun '17

11 Jun '17

We're meeting at the Blue Swan Diner (I think it's in Ocean Township) at 9am tomorrow and will be back at the museum around 10:30ish. All are welcome. ------------------------- Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation A 501(c)3 educational non-profit Evan(a)vcfed.org (646) 546-9999 www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation

1 1

OT: Rasperry Pi Linux Malware
by Tony Bogan 09 Jun '17

09 Jun '17

http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-malware-enslaves-raspberry-pi-to-mine-cr… Sent from my iPhone

3 2

PowerPC upgrade card?
by David Hoelzer 09 Jun '17

09 Jun '17

I’ve recently come into possession of a Macintosh Quadra 610AV. I’ve replaced all of the SMD capacitors and the PRAM and it’s running beautifully… but it could really use a PPC upgrade card since it only has a 68040 in it. Does anyone have anything lying around, perchance, that they would be willing to part with? Thanks!

1 0

June 10-11 workshop sign-up
by Evan Koblentz 09 Jun '17

09 Jun '17

Everyone, Here is the sign-up sheet for the next workshop. https://tinyurl.com/y76ns8my ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit evan(a)vcfed.org (646) 546-9999 www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation instagram.com/vcfederation

2 5

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Museum pictures
by VAXman＠tmesis.org 07 Jun '17

07 Jun '17

Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic writes: >As a docent, I took some photos a ways back attempting decent coverage >and just put them on my imgur account. Its not official or complete, but >perhaps useful for now. http://imgur.com/a/tjYMm It would be great if we >did something like what I have here on the VCFed site that we could put >our official descriptions and let folks also ad personal accounts and >comments. How about a 4K video walk-through?

5 6

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Museum pictures
by VAXman＠tmesis.org 07 Jun '17

07 Jun '17

Martin A Flynn via vcf-midatlantic writes: >On 6/7/2017 1:36 PM, Brian Schenkenberger via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > >Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic writes: > >> As a docent, I took >some photos a ways back attempting decent coverage >> and just put them >on my imgur account. Its not official or complete, but >> perhaps useful >for now. http://imgur.com/a/tjYMm It would be great if we >> did >something like what I have here on the VCFed site that we could put >> >our official descriptions and let folks also ad personal accounts and >> >comments. > How about a 4K video walk-through? Panoramic as an example: >https://www.isec.space/pano/9162/_html5/9162.html Save that that's not video, that'd be cool too. >

1 0

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Museum pictures
by VAXman＠tmesis.org 07 Jun '17

07 Jun '17

Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic writes: >> How about a 4K video walk-through? > >We'll consider it. Again, there is the concern of "giving away" too much >if people can see the whole thing while laying in bed and using their >smartphones. LOL! No, just a video to serve as an advertisement of what's in store should they decide to get out of bed and or turn off their smartphones.

1 0

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Found: VMS Hobbyist CDs
by VAXman＠tmesis.org 06 Jun '17

06 Jun '17

Jonathan Gevaryahu via vcf-midatlantic writes: >AFAIK OSes which require drives with '512 byte blocks' is sort of a scsi >hack. The physical data on the cd surface is 2048 byte blocks (plus ECC >and subchannel data you don't normally see for 2532 bytes per sector, >plus headers and sync marks etc) The whole 512 byte thing is a special >mode certain cd drives have which sends each 2048 byte block to the host >computer as if it was four separate 512 byte blocks/sectors, but its >really just a translation layer. Not all drives do it. > >The actual CD contents for these VMS cds are 2048 byte blocks, the 512 >byte magic happens in the drive, AFAIK. > >I could be wrong about this. Pretty much, that's correct. However, if you want VMS to boot from the CD, it had better present the CD image in 512 byte blocks.

1 0