Keyboard Shortcuts
ctrl + shift + ? :
Show all keyboard shortcuts
ctrl + g :
Navigate to a group
ctrl + shift + f :
Find
ctrl + / :
Quick actions
esc to dismiss
Likes
Search
old computers
|
Chuck Harris <cfharris@...> wrote:
arthurok_2000 wrote:I *had* an LI-1000E clone of an IBM 1130, complete with 29Mis anyone in this group other then dave wiseI have an old PDP8/E with a TU56 dectape drive. In the 12 platter top loading disk packs. It was card input (had the 029 keypunch, too) and had a 600lpm band printer. 'twas operational in my living room. My oldies these days are considerably smaller and newer. PDP8's & 11's are wonderful pieces of history. In fact pretty much anything DEC made is nifty. -ls- |
|
Dave Casey
Interested, yes. Knowledgable, no.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Dave Casey ----- Original Message -----
From: arthurok_2000 To: TekScopes@... Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2007 8:47 PM Subject: [TekScopes] old computers is anyone in this group other then dave wise into old computers?? |
|
Hugh Prescott
Everything from a wire wrapped 1802, low serial # Altair, early IMSI etc.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Most will still power up. Hugh arthurok_2000 wrote: is anyone in this group other then dave wise |
|
J Forster
im quite familiar with the lsi11 and q bus
never was a great fan of the data general nova machines. They had nice features and some crocks. The 'increment memory location' via DMA was useful for making multi-channel analyzers and photon counting imagers. Their use of mostly standard parts was a real plus. You could make good money by buying a minimally stuffed board and loading it fully, once you knew how. The company management sucked, top to bottom, with the sole exception of an ex-Tek sales engineer. FWIW, -John |
|
Ashton Brown
Heh.. cut teeth on a PDP-8 - we were first to use a "(mini)computer" to control the guide field of a large particle accelerator.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Here was this 'bitchin' lookin heavy/small Thing with smoked-plastic covers: blinking at you. In Octal. The DEC "manual" was written for those who already knew what was in the manual. I had to start with a blackboard and Boolean Algebra book, on through RIM loader, wft-is-'assembly'?, wtf is an 'ALU', octal etc. I realized I'd never be (want to be) a programmer, but at least learned how-to: create a program to print out a BCD encoded paper tape on the ASR-33. Valuable lore.. from machine language through assy and compiling my source on the CDC-6600. And quite enough por moi, thankyouverymuch. It's always useful to suffer through the basics.. then no snot-nose wannabe-someday 'IT'er can baffle you with BS.. 'explaining-away' some latest Redmond buffer overflow - built in by some bored committee of drones chained to a cubicle 10 years ago: and today -?- exposing you to the spoofer from Belgrade. Crapware has now infected the entire World. It will take a generation to undo what autistic/arrogant Billy has done to us all. For mere greed via mere hubris. Still have a pristine Otrona茂驴陆 CP/M portable w/ 5" green screen - operable last year I looked. Any takers? (Word Star mnemonic codes inculcated into fingers.. still beats stupid-mousing distractions and M$ Word style eye candy -- for sheer speed of text entry -- for any touch typist. ^KS - saves your work, etc. You never forget, as their mnemonics made logical sense immediately - and your hands never left the home row.) Fat chance of getting a 100 GB HD onto that CP/M OS, though :-/ Chuck Harris wrote: arthurok_2000 wrote: |
|
Chuck Harris
Hi Arthur,
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
I am currently using a laptop to act as the console terminal. It works just fine, but then again, the laptop works better and is decades faster than the 8/E, so might just as well not use the 8/E at all! I am looking for a console terminal that is age appropriate to the 8/E. A 4010, or 4012 looks nice, and was used on 8/E's in the research world. At least the 4010 is built with ttl chips, like the 8/E. A DecWriter or ASR33 would be more authentic, though. -Chuck arthurok wrote: i like dec tape drives and the tu56 was a very good one |
From: TekScopes@... [mailto:TekScopes@...]OnMy first job was at a small laser scribing/trimming shop, and my first task there was to build a plug-in board for a PDP-8/e that would interface to an X-Y positioning table. I remember how well-written the DEC manual was, and how straightforward the circuit design. The interface took me only a few days and worked the first time. I'm not bragging - it was mostly thanks to DEC. Later when I was doing custom mods for Tek's Information Display division, I regularly assembled terminal firmware on an 11/45 running RSTS. Collecting a printout, I would often snag on the front panel lights, just gazing mesmerized as they went through their tail-chasing idle pattern. Nearby was a small photo lab, with a "RotoTrack" (sp?) lightlock door. Some wag had put up a picture from the Woody Allen movie "Sleeper" showing Woody emerging in a somewhat disorganized state from the "Orgasmatron", which bore an uncanny resemblance to the Rototrack. Dave |
|
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
-----Original Message-----There were two computers in the dusty storeroom at the University of Portland in 1978: the 1620 I would rescue from the scrap dealer, and a PDP-8/e + 4010 + TU56. Someone had built a custom interface that allowed the PDP to read paper tapes using the 1620's paper tape reader, which could load PAL-8 at 150 bytes/second, 15 times the speed of the ASR33 that sat abandoned in the corner. This is in turn much slower than my early-1970's Remex paper tape reader. It's interesting to compare technologies. The ASR-33 was 100% mechanical, and read tapes by poking at them with spring-loaded pins. Any pin that went through was a 1. The 1621 (1620 PT reader) uses photodiodes, but still drives the tape with a pinwheel which furnishes the clock output. The electronics are discrete PNP Ge transistors. The Remex uses TTL. It shrank the photodiodes enough that they could slip a ninth one between 4 and 5 to read the feed hole directly, and it runs the tape with a rubber capstan drive, at twice (maybe 4x - I can't remember) the speed of the 1621. ObTek: I brought up the 1620 with the aid of a 535. I heard later from one of the original IBM design team that they used the same model when they were bringing up the product for the first time. ObTek2: The custom interface used Tek-numbered transistors. And they weren't the ubiquitous -0188/-0190 (2N3906/4). Dave |
|
Hugh Prescott
Chuck
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
I have a working DecWriter wide carriage L120-DA sitting here looking for a home. It's in Quincy IL , 100 miles north of St. Louis. Prefer it be picked up. Last used as a lineprinter on a Novell network. Complete tech manual included. Hugh Chuck Harris wrote: Hi Arthur, |
|
Hugh Prescott
Yesterday got a call from a metal fabrication plant that I had helped figure out some RS-232 problems commuincating with a CNC turrnt punch several years ago. Big sucker 12 inch holes in 1/2 inch plate steel at about 30 per second.
Big piles of steel plate waiting to be punched, it's a RUSH repair. Had the computer that is used to upload the punch programs go down. Compaq ProLinnea 486SX with 200Mhz Pentium Overdrive chip, 20 Mb RAM and a 270 Mb hard drive and a 3.5 floppy. Hard drive was totally dead. No CD ROM drive in this all in one box. Found an old but good WD 345 Mb drive, made up power and IDE drive cables to run the CD drive outside the case. Found the USB CD ROM version of Win 95 and then the special boot floppy to install Win 95 on systems that will not boot from a CD. Took more than 3 hours to find all the stuff, get it all together and load Win 95 but it all came together. Drove it out to the plant and hooked it up. Loaded their punch control software and loaded a job to punch. Everything worked like a charm. They think I am a freeking hero. Hugh Never throw anything away ever. |
|
I used to have a bunch of old Commodore PET/CBM machines built from scrap they tossed out, including lots of schematics, eng data, prototypes, etc but sold 98% of it to a school teacher in the late 80's for $20. Wish I had kept one of the top end systems. Still have few 6502 based single boards like the Aim65, KIM-1, and one of the comsac? Sym boards (I'm a little hazy on these). Oh, and an HP86.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
-Dave -------------- Original message --------------
From: Chuck Harris <cfharris@...> arthurok_2000 wrote: is anyone in this group other then dave wiseI have an old PDP8/E with a TU56 dectape drive. In the spirit of tektronix, I am looking for a 4010 to use with it. -Chuck Harris |
|
My high school was supposedly the first to have a PDP-8/E installed (~1976?). We had a punch card reader and 2 punch card machines (I haven't seen one since!) along with the usual peripherals. The service people hated us because the computer lab was in a portable classroom and wasn't anywhere near "clean". They were always out fixing something. For a while one we had a problem with the tapes staying on the drives- the right one would pop off and unwind through the door into the adjoining classroom...
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
-Dave -------------- Original message --------------
From: Ashton Brown <ashton@...> Heh.. cut teeth on a PDP-8 - we were first to use a "(mini)computer" to[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] |
|
Stefan Trethan
On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:06:17 +0100, Hugh Prescott <hugh345@...> wrote:
Found an old but good WD 345 Mb drive, made up power and IDE drive Would it not have been easier to install 95 on a PC with CD drive, or copy the install directory to the harddisk? It gets a little frightened and confused if you put it in a totally different PC (drivers), but it usually survives just fine. If you want to spare it that traumatic experience you can pull the power after the first reboot (before it detects hardware), and transplant. What kept you from running the harddrive internally? ST |
|
Michael Bender
d.seiter@... wrote:
Still have few 6502 based single boards like the Aim65, KIM-1Ahh... the KIM-1 brings back fond memories. That was the first microprocessor that I programmed, in HEX on the keypad, since my friend and I didn't have the tape recorder interface. We used it to control stage lights for our disco parties - this was the mid-to late-70's remember! We had to hand type in all the opcodes before each party, and hope that the KIM-1 didn't crash or lock up or reset and wipe out RAM, otherwise we'd be back to typing in the program again while the lights were left in some random state. mike |
|
Anyone looking to dispose of / find old computer parts should get in touch
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
with the classic computer group - classiccmp.org. Geoff. -------------- Original message --------------
From: Ashton Brown <ashton@...> <snip> Still have a pristine OtronaT CP/M portable w/ 5" green screen - Yahoo! Groups Links -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.441 / Virus Database: 268.17.31/676 - Release Date: 08/02/07 15:04 |
|
Dennis Tillman
The tail-chasing idle pattern is still with us.
It was so popular in the computer world that many companies imitated it. I remember a Prime mini-computer doing the same thing. The most recent incarnation of it is in Windows. As Windows is booting up, a little graphic scrolls a gradually changing blue pattern across the bottom of the screen to let you know everything is still working. 30 years ago I built a LED front panel into my home built S100 bus PC so I could tell at a glance that it was working right. Every line on the buss was buffered and drove an individual LED. The LEDs were organized according to function on the front panel. But I went even further. I incorporated a Run/Stop/Single Step circuit into my system so I could pause the computer anywhere and single step it along to see what it was doing in slow motion. More recently (13 years ago) I created a little circuit that had a row of LEDs on it and a port address on the PCs ISA buss. If I loaded a TSR when the PC booted up the resident software would talk to the port every fraction of a section to increment the light pattern. It ws a crude indicator of how busy the PC was. ---------------------------------------------------- From: David Wise ...I would often snag on the front panel lights, just gazing mesmerized as they went through their tail-chasing idle pattern. |
|
Hugh Prescott
This model Compaq is the one that has the motherboard, hard drive and 3.5 FD mounted on a pull out tray under the monitor. No room for a CD. Just enough room to get a cable out the empty slot.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Something that Compaq designed to compete with the early Mac, everything in one box. Even has a NIC on the motherboard. Power supply is up in the monitor, will not power up unless the tray is all the way in. And I have had too many bad experiences with IDE compatibility to try that. I have about a 50 percent success rate with loading windows on computers and then moving the drive. I had to just lay the CD-ROM drive on the workbench not the hard drive. Hugh Stefan Trethan wrote: On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:06:17 +0100, Hugh Prescott <hugh345@...> wrote:Found an old but good WD 345 Mb drive, made up power and IDE driveWould it not have been easier to install 95 on a PC with CD drive, or copy the install directory to the harddisk? |
|
I've been watching the old Battlestar Galactica series as background for the
current series and seeing an impressive amount of Tektronix equipment. Anybody know what the deal was with Tek supplying the props? It is fun to watch vector graphics displays writing text. Were the computers Tek too? Mike Csontos |
to navigate to use esc to dismiss