On 2/5/2016 10:35 PM, Tony Hwang wrote:
Don Y wrote:
On 2/5/2016 6:19 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 13:33:36 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/5/2016 1:08 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 13:57:59 -0500, wrote:
snipped
My archives consist of saving the hard drives from all
the old pc's ... doubt I could retrieve much from them
now, even if I wanted to ..
John T.


--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

Why not? You can connect them to a windows machine and it will read
FAT just fine.
That depends. If it is an old RLL or MFM drive he might have a LOT of
trouble finding an interface card that would fit a new machine and
match the drive - and then to find one with driver support??? Even
harder yet would be an older ESDI drive.

It's not just the physical/bus interface (ISA vs PCI). Much old
software
talked directly *to* the hardware. So, expected to see particular
registers
at particular IO ports that caused particular things to happen *in* the
hardware. Much of that has now been virtualized (as it should have been
ages ago -- but MS is always a decade or three behind the times) and
likely
won't work.

I keep a Compaq Portable 386 for the express purpose of supporting
legacy
hardware and software devices. Granted, it's only a 20MHz machine.
But,
most of the hardware and software that I'm supporting were *designed*
for that
sort of horsepower. So, not really "slow"!

I have an old socket 7 (P1) machine here that has't puked up any bad
capacitors yet and it will still run old drives (40meg was the last

Re-capping a machine isn't tough. I've an Optiplex 745 USF (Core2 duo
@1.8G)
sitting on the floor (alongside *this* Optiplex 745 UFS) that I'll be
recapping next week (as a spare for this box)

one I dumped) but most of my legacy stuff is on SCSI drives and they
work fine on my fax/scanner/file server Latitude laptop.
The scanner is SCSI and I have an open port on the cable.

I have three HBA's on each of my "PC" workstations; two on each of the
Sun workstations. SCA drives essentially let me swap volumes without
even having to uncable the drive enclosures. (though the internal
drives in the Sun boxen are FC-AL so not really easy to unplug while
the machine is running -- hence the use of the external disk shelf's)

Two scanners are SCSI while the third and fourth I've elected to use
their USB interface (because they are physically two far from their
hosts for a SCSI cable -- without resorting to the "3B/s" SCSI
asynchronous rate for the entire cable!)

I still have the "data" drive that was on my work system when I
retired in 96 (including the backup of the C but it is also spinning
on this machine ... the whole thing about the size of a short video
clip.

My WfWG machines were ~4G when I retired them (early 90's?). A far cry
from
the 60M on my first PC (and the dual 8", 1.4MB floppies on my first
"computer")

I long ago archived all (old) my machines to 9T tape. From there, to
MO media. And, from there, to CD and DVD. Currently, the images reside
on external USB drives.

"Live" images reside on a SCSI disk shelf (JBOD) and run on a *hardware*
emulator (a 700MHz PC-on-a-card) in a SPARC chassis. I.e., I can run
a "real" PC inside a Solaris "window" and not have to worry about
hardware compatibility because the "emulator" has all the hardware
of a real PC!

But, as the SB2000 (that hosts that emulator) doesn't remotely support
an "ISA bus", I need something else to run "PC hardware". The Compaq
Portable 386 has two ISA slots (because mine has the expansion chassis
http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/compaq3drive.jpg). This
gives me support for 5" floppies and the ISA expansion slots without
having to keep an ancient PC/keyboard on hand just for that capability.

[And, it's got a cute little canvas bag so I don't have to keep dusting
the damn thing! : ]

So no one used system run on vacuum tubes?

No. Though I did design a two-player, interactive football game
using analog computers in high school (on a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood)

And, years later, used an 8i ("flip chip" technology).

Tape reels the size of a small car tire?

Sure! I still have a carton of 10" Scotch BlackWatch in my closet!
Though I discarded my last 9T transport a few years ago.

Punched cards with finger nails.(used to be a pre-indented
blank card stock)

Not since a Wang "electronic calculator" in high school (programmed
with punched cards)

Programmed in machine code?

For the Nova minicomputers, we'd "bit switch" opcodes/data into
core (REAL core) using the bat-handled switches on the front panel.
Then, hit the "run" switch.

For the i4004, we would "hand assemble" code (using a small cheat
sheet carried in your wallet for the "assembler").

For the Z80, we'd hot plug code using a custom monitor (so you could
enter/alter code into a running system and see how it fared) using
"split octal" (03770377 vs. 0xFFFF).

For a CPU I designed in the 80's, I'd write code using "macros"
(essentially text mnemonics wrapped around numeric codes) that a
COTS "assembler" would brute force convert into *my* "machine language".

And, of course, that doesn't count the assembly language coding
that permeates much of my career (cuz I code on "bare metal").