How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm talking
about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95, Wang,
IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus one
bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone with a
hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the ability
to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid today what 100
times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

Just an old fart reminiscing,

Ivan Vegvary

Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

I actually salvaged a couple Monroe-matics from
the dumpster at work many years ago. The actually
worked for a number of years, I loved to show them
off doing long multiplications. Finally, they
jammed up to the point I couldn't unjam them, and
my wife made me get rid of them.

We had a Wang calculator at work. A 3 foot cube
full of boards, and 4 consoles with nixie tune
displays on them.

I still have my HP45, which kind of still works.

I was one of the few people with a MicroVax at
home in the late 1980's. It finally blew a disk
drive last year and I shut it down for good. Now,
it is pitifully slow compared to PCs. I did get
20 years use out of it though!

Jon

"Jon Elson" wrote in message
...
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.
We had a Wang calculator at work. A 3 foot cube full of boards, and 4
consoles with nixie tune displays on them.
Jon

I bought my Wang used from an engineering competitor. It had an IBM
selectric input/output, along with a flatbed plotter. Two Memorex floppy
drives were attached. One of the flopies (not the drive) went bad and had
to buy a new disc. $ 800 for an 8" floppy (yes, they were floppy in those
days) that had a capacity of about 160K.

Ivan Vegvary

In article , "Ivan Vegvary" wrote:

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the ability
to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid today what 100
times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

I still use a slide rule...

I hate to admit it, but the first computer I "tried to program" was
the Univac 1 and the (Sperry?) Mark IV - all programming was in binary
and short term memory was mercury delay tanks (this in 1956 or so) -
you checked your "program" on a hand cranked Monroe! The only thing
that mattered was conserving machine time & I was the world's worst,
one of my roomates was the top of the class, went to MIT & got his
Ph.D with Shannon, ended up at Bell labs and wrote the file structure
for unix. Another roomate also got a job at Bell, and was responsible
for a graphical user interface for whatever editor replaced vi.

I decided there was no future in computers, switched out of mechanical
engineering, finished up with a BA in physics.

I have used a few of the early computers (including the Curta).. Joel
in Florida

Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone
with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the
ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid
today what 100 times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

Just an old fart reminiscing,

Ivan Vegvary

Have a Curta Type II on the shelf, HP 95, IBM XT in the other shop.
I have a special purpose slide rule for the fire service. It has flow
loss, pump pressure/volume, and hose loss calculations for rapid use.
Comes in handy if you have multiple pump makes and capacities.

--
Steve W.

Ivan Vegvary wrote:

How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone
with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the
ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid
today what 100 times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

Just an old fart reminiscing,

Ivan Vegvary

I took pretty much the same route and I've still got my Curta. But, my
first true digital computer was a single board uncased SYM, a 6502
processor machine with 2K of RAM and a hex display.

I used the Curta mostly for competing in sports car
"time-speed-distance" rallies, and cranked it automatically with a
single revolution motorized drive. I've still got the Curta (with a hole
in the center of it's bottom cover) and the drive/hundredth of a mile
odometer box. G

See center photo he

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/temp/rallying.html

Thanks for the mammaries,

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
The speed of light is 1.8*10^12 furlongs per fortnight.

Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone
with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the
ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid
today what 100 times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

You left out teletype connected to PDP 8/L minicomputer.

"jeff_wisnia" wrote in message
eonecommunications...
Ivan Vegvary wrote:

How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone
with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the
ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid
today what 100 times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

Just an old fart reminiscing,

Ivan Vegvary

I took pretty much the same route and I've still got my Curta. But, my
first true digital computer was a single board uncased SYM, a 6502
processor machine with 2K of RAM and a hex display.

I used the Curta mostly for competing in sports car "time-speed-distance"
rallies, and cranked it automatically with a single revolution motorized
drive. I've still got the Curta (with a hole in the center of it's bottom
cover) and the drive/hundredth of a mile odometer box. G

See center photo he

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/temp/rallying.html

Thanks for the mammaries,

Jeff

Jeff,
Looked at your website!! What an ingenious use of a Curta. Whatever mad
you think of this?

Ivan Vegvary

"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone
with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the
ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid
today what 100 times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

You left out teletype connected to PDP 8/L minicomputer.

You are so right, Jim. Digital Equipment Corporation was a big player. I
got to use one for a few months back in 1972. I also forgot to mention
Radio Shack's tandy computer.

Ivan Vegvary

I took pretty much the same route and I've still got my Curta. But, my
first true digital computer was a single board uncased SYM, a 6502
processor machine with 2K of RAM and a hex display.

I used the Curta mostly for competing in sports car
"time-speed-distance" rallies, and cranked it automatically with a
single revolution motorized drive. I've still got the Curta (with a hole
in the center of it's bottom cover) and the drive/hundredth of a mile
odometer box. G

See center photo he

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/temp/rallying.html

Thanks for the mammaries,

Jeff


NICE navigators board. I used something similar but had a different
readout for the mileage. Of course I also did my driving a few decades
after you. Although Pre-GPS and cell phone.

--
Steve W.

Ivan Vegvary wrote:

"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone
with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the
ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid
today what 100 times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

You left out teletype connected to PDP 8/L minicomputer.

You are so right, Jim. Digital Equipment Corporation was a big player. I
got to use one for a few months back in 1972. I also forgot to mention
Radio Shack's tandy computer.


No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How
about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How
about VME/VXI?


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!

In article , "Michael A. Terrell" wrote:

No one here has ever played with any Data General computers?

Oh, yes. I learned BASIC programming in high school on a DG Nova II, with a
whopping 8K of ferrite-core memory. The only I/O device was a teletype
equipped with a paper tape reader/punch. I have fond memories of rebooting the
box by entering the bootstrap loader, one word at a time, through the switches
on the front panel.

"Doug Miller" wrote in message
...
In article , "Michael A.
Terrell" wrote:

No one here has ever played with any Data General computers?

Oh, yes. I learned BASIC programming in high school on a DG Nova II, with
a
whopping 8K of ferrite-core memory. The only I/O device was a teletype
equipped with a paper tape reader/punch. I have fond memories of rebooting
the
box by entering the bootstrap loader, one word at a time, through the
switches
on the front panel.

that's exactly like the wang i used in high school. it also had 8k of core
memory, but had 4 asr33's connected and could run 4 programs at the same
time. i have the same bootstrap memories, but they weren't fond at the time.

On 2009-04-30, Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm talking
about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95, Wang,
IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

Slide rules (many over the years), Best current one is a 20"
mahagony and ivory K&E, (and for fun a 36" store demo
Picket log-log.)
Friden

Would have *loved* to have a Curta (still would)

Soroban & Abacus (still have them)
HP 9100B (at work only -- but it got me hooked on programming.)
HP-45
Altair 680b (6800 based kit computer)
TI Programmer (computer math)
HP-67
HP-15C (better computer math)
HP-16C
STWP 6800 (DOS-68)
SWTP 6809 (DOS-69 and OS-9)
Radio Shack Color Computer (OS-9)
Cosmos CMS-16/UNX (68000 based v7 unix system)
XT clone
AT&T Unix-PC (68010 based SysV unix)
Sun 2/120 (68010 based BSD unix)
Tektronix 6130 (NS 32016 based BSD unix)
Lots of Sun3 machines (68010 CPU, unix)
Lots of Sun4, Sun4c, and Sun4m machines (SPARC based)
Four Sun4u machines (Sun Blade 1000, 2000, Sun fire 280R)
Intel based Mac Mini (for things which *demand* a "popular" OS
to be connected to the net.
Misc Intel based machines running OpenBSD and linux, as well as
single token Windows machine (without Word. :-)
Most software of choice is open source, including the various
CAD programs which I use from time to time.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus one
bead)

Actually -- minus *two* per column. only one in the top row,
and only four in the bottom row. :-)

and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone with a
hand-crank Monroe.

I never got that good.

I think the slide rule should still be taught.

Agreed -- though I was self taught.

It sure gave use the ability
to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid today what 100
times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

Sigh.

Just an old fart reminiscing,

And another one, joining in.

Thanks,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Doug Miller wrote:

In article , "Michael A. Terrell" wrote:

No one here has ever played with any Data General computers?

Oh, yes. I learned BASIC programming in high school on a DG Nova II, with a
whopping 8K of ferrite-core memory. The only I/O device was a teletype
equipped with a paper tape reader/punch. I have fond memories of rebooting the
box by entering the bootstrap loader, one word at a time, through the switches
on the front panel.


I might still have the front panel, somewhere. I junked it years ago,
and donated the racks to a Christian TV station I was building. I lost
a couple rental warehouses in 2002, when I got sick & lost my job when
my employer was bought out.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!

On 2009-04-30, Ivan Vegvary wrote:

"Jon Elson" wrote in message
...
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

[ ... ]

I bought my Wang used from an engineering competitor. It had an IBM
selectric input/output, along with a flatbed plotter. Two Memorex floppy
drives were attached. One of the flopies (not the drive) went bad and had
to buy a new disc. $ 800 for an 8" floppy (yes, they were floppy in those
days) that had a capacity of about 160K.

Hmm ... soft sectored or hard sectored?

The 8" floppies which I used on my SWTP systems we

250 K (SSSD)
500 K (SSDD)
1 M (DSDD)

but some systems used the 8" floppies as punched card images, so a 128
byte sector would only usefully hold 80 bytes, so that would take a SSSD
from 250K down to 160 K.

I've seen the Wangs with the single cube and four stations --
and there was a single clamshell punched card reader as part of it.
Deadly slow to read a stack of cards -- but I guess that it didn't have
enough memory to make it worthwhile anyway. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2009-04-30, Ivan Vegvary wrote:

"Jon Elson" wrote in message
...
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

[ ... ]

I bought my Wang used from an engineering competitor. It had an IBM
selectric input/output, along with a flatbed plotter. Two Memorex floppy
drives were attached. One of the floppies (not the drive) went bad and had
to buy a new disc. $ 800 for an 8" floppy (yes, they were floppy in those
days) that had a capacity of about 160K.

Hmm ... soft sectored or hard sectored?

The 8" floppies which I used on my SWTP systems we

250 K (SSSD)
500 K (SSDD)
1 M (DSDD)

but some systems used the 8" floppies as punched card images, so a 128
byte sector would only usefully hold 80 bytes, so that would take a SSSD
from 250K down to 160 K.

I've seen the Wangs with the single cube and four stations --
and there was a single clamshell punched card reader as part of it.
Deadly slow to read a stack of cards -- but I guess that it didn't have
enough memory to make it worthwhile anyway. :-)


One of the Metrodata computers used a SMS 8" drive system that held
500K per disk. We ran them as master slave, because we could just barely
squeeze everything into 500K and could make a backup every day without
unlocking the CATV headend where the computer was. (The headend was
kept at 65 degrees F, year round) I replaced the master floppy once a
month by moving it from drive 1 to drive 0 and formatting a new disk in
drive 1. Then when the day's backup was made, we archived the old disk
for emergencies. The damn Shugart 801 drives ran 24/7 and wore out in
about two years. Every new drive had a different PC board, so we had to
make several phone calls to get the configuration data every time a
drive failed. The SMS design didn't lift the arm when it wasn't in use,
so the felt pads would wear out. Then the arm would stick to the disk
and destroy the floppy.

Somewhere I should have a pair of Teac 1/2 height 8" DSDD drives that
don't need 120 VAC.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!

On a shelf above my desk, I have an abacus, my high school slide rule,
my mom's Comptometer, a plug-board from an IBM card sorter, an
Add-O-Meter, an LSI-11, a cylindrical slide rule, one of Ben
Scheiderman's keyboard keycaps (he felt keyboards were obsolete, and
used to toss keycaps into the audience at talks), a Unix food container
(it is -- or at least was -- a brand of tupperware-like containers in
Japan with no known relevance to Unix), and a Compaq Concerto laptop.

I need to replace the Concerto with my Digi-Comp I (after replacing
springs on the Digi-Comp). I've also got some of Grace Hopper's
nanoseconds that need to be appropriately displayed.

"Joe Pfeiffer" wrote in message
...
On a shelf above my desk, I have an abacus, my high school slide rule,
my mom's Comptometer, a plug-board from an IBM card sorter, an
Add-O-Meter, an LSI-11, a cylindrical slide rule, one of Ben
Scheiderman's keyboard keycaps (he felt keyboards were obsolete, and
used to toss keycaps into the audience at talks), a Unix food container
(it is -- or at least was -- a brand of tupperware-like containers in
Japan with no known relevance to Unix), and a Compaq Concerto laptop.

I need to replace the Concerto with my Digi-Comp I (after replacing
springs on the Digi-Comp). I've also got some of Grace Hopper's
nanoseconds that need to be appropriately displayed.

i lost my nanoseconds a few moves ago, but count myself lucky i got to hear
some of her talks in the pentagon in the mid-70s.

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:44:01 +0000, Doug Miller wrote:
... "Michael A. Terrell" wrote:

No one here has ever played with any Data General computers?

Oh, yes. I learned BASIC programming in high school on a DG Nova II,
with a whopping 8K of ferrite-core memory. The only I/O device was a
teletype equipped with a paper tape reader/punch. I have fond memories
of rebooting the box by entering the bootstrap loader, one word at a
time, through the switches on the front panel.

In the mid-'70's, I worked with a process-control system based
on 7 Nova 800's and 1200's, connected to high-speed paper tape
reader, ASR-33 teletype, P300 Printronix line printer, 20MB
removable-disk-pack drive, and 30+ racks of actuators and sensors.
The network was based on 3 ea. 16-Mbps links using DMA.

It was easy to fat-finger a network-based bootstrap loader into
memory but some techs occasionally transferred programs from one
computer to another by moving a core-memory card. The computers
mostly had 32KB RAM, but a few had some bank-switched memory as
well. For assembling, compiling, etc there was a 750KB
head-per-track disk drive where we kept RDOS. We opened up one
of these drives once, after the upper 500KB of storage stopped
working, and saw a lot of specks of aluminum ground off the
platters by crashed heads.

--
jiw

On 2009-04-30, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Ivan Vegvary wrote:

"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

[ ... ]

You left out teletype connected to PDP 8/L minicomputer.

[ ... ]

No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How
about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How
about VME/VXI?

Data General Nova (at work, not at home).

Tektronix 6130 based on the National Semiconductor 32016 CPU (at home).

Both my "Cosmos CMS-16/UNX" and my Sun 2/120 used the Intel
Multibus, but not Intel CPUs in either case. Instead
68000 (for the Cosmos), and 68010 (for the Sun 2/120).

DEC LSI-11 (in the Bridgeport BOSS-3 CNC mill. :-)

Aside from that, I've done a bit of work on a CDC Cyber 70 (but
certainly not at home. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2009-04-30, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2009-04-30, Ivan Vegvary wrote:

[ ... ]

I bought my Wang used from an engineering competitor. It had an IBM
selectric input/output, along with a flatbed plotter. Two Memorex floppy
drives were attached. One of the floppies (not the drive) went bad and had
to buy a new disc. $ 800 for an 8" floppy (yes, they were floppy in those
days) that had a capacity of about 160K.

Hmm ... soft sectored or hard sectored?

The 8" floppies which I used on my SWTP systems we

250 K (SSSD)
500 K (SSDD)
1 M (DSDD)

but some systems used the 8" floppies as punched card images, so a 128
byte sector would only usefully hold 80 bytes, so that would take a SSSD
from 250K down to 160 K.

[ ... ]

One of the Metrodata computers used a SMS 8" drive system that held
500K per disk.

O.K. Either SSDD, or DSSD depending.

We ran them as master slave, because we could just barely
squeeze everything into 500K and could make a backup every day without
unlocking the CATV headend where the computer was. (The headend was
kept at 65 degrees F, year round) I replaced the master floppy once a
month by moving it from drive 1 to drive 0 and formatting a new disk in
drive 1. Then when the day's backup was made, we archived the old disk
for emergencies. The damn Shugart 801 drives ran 24/7 and wore out in
about two years. Every new drive had a different PC board, so we had to
make several phone calls to get the configuration data every time a
drive failed. The SMS design didn't lift the arm when it wasn't in use,

O.K. This makes it SSDD (Single Sided Double Density), since
the Double Sided drives moved one head against the other closing onto
the surface of the floppy. Those *might* have lasted longer in a clean
environment. (Of course, a bit after the Mt. St. Helens eruption, 8"
(and 5-1/4") floppies were having problems because of the airborne
abrasive dust which it spit out.

so the felt pads would wear out. Then the arm would stick to the disk
and destroy the floppy.

Ouch! I *never* had an 8" floppy drive wear out -- but the OS
and controller lifted the heads when not actively reading or writing.

I *did* have a DSDD 5-1/4" floppy drive die -- but from poor
design. The centering cpu was on a 1/4" shaft, running through two
shoulder style ball bearing assemblies, and secured by the drive pulley
slid onto the shaft, and then a central screw and washer tightened to
grip, followed by a glob of Glyptal to secure it.

Note that I didn't mention a spacer between the inner races?
The shoulders spaced the outer races out on the cylindrical bore, but
they depended on tightening the screw beyond slip onto the pulley, which
resulted in a serious end load on the bearings. When I discovered the
problem, it was when some new OS disks could not be read (the previous
ones were 8", and these were 5-1/4"). Once I pulled the drive, I could
feel the bearings cogging when I tried to turn the spindle.

So -- I got some new bearings (again with shoulders) dis some
measuring, and machined up a spacer (actual metalworking here :-) to go
between the inner races. I left about 0.001" of end float when the
screw through the pulley was cranked down tight -- since the centering
cup was held biased by the centering cone which held the floppy in
place. Once that was done, I got lots of life from the drive. I wish
that I could remember who made that drive. For a long time it was my
only double-sided 5-1/4", and kept company with three single-sided
Shugart 5-1/4" drives (and two 8" DSDD drives on the same system.)

Somewhere I should have a pair of Teac 1/2 height 8" DSDD drives that
don't need 120 VAC.

Hmm .... there was also the one used in one of the sytems which
had a voice-coil servo for head positioning, instead of a stepper motor.
I never had one, but I understand that while they were noticeably faster
on track-to-track seeks, the also needed to be re-aligned fairly often,
while the Shugarts were rock solid as far as alignment goes.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2009-04-30, Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking
about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang,
IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

Slide rules (many over the years), Best current one is a 20"
mahagony and ivory K&E, (and for fun a 36" store demo
Picket log-log.)

Always wanted a 20" or a 8" plus diameter circular rule. When I saw them in
pawn shops, I still could not afford it. it.


Friden

Would have *loved* to have a Curta (still would)

Soroban & Abacus (still have them)
HP 9100B (at work only -- but it got me hooked on programming.)
HP-45
Altair 680b (6800 based kit computer)
TI Programmer (computer math)
HP-67
HP-15C (better computer math)
HP-16C
STWP 6800 (DOS-68)
SWTP 6809 (DOS-69 and OS-9)
Radio Shack Color Computer (OS-9)
Cosmos CMS-16/UNX (68000 based v7 unix system)
XT clone
AT&T Unix-PC (68010 based SysV unix)
Sun 2/120 (68010 based BSD unix)
Tektronix 6130 (NS 32016 based BSD unix)
Lots of Sun3 machines (68010 CPU, unix)
Lots of Sun4, Sun4c, and Sun4m machines (SPARC based)
Four Sun4u machines (Sun Blade 1000, 2000, Sun fire 280R)
Intel based Mac Mini (for things which *demand* a "popular" OS
to be connected to the net.
Misc Intel based machines running OpenBSD and linux, as well as
single token Windows machine (without Word. :-)
Most software of choice is open source, including the various
CAD programs which I use from time to time.

From the above, it looks like you've done it all!!

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one
bead)

Actually -- minus *two* per column. only one in the top row,
and only four in the bottom row. :-)

You are correct.



I think the slide rule should still be taught.

Agreed -- though I was self taught.

It sure gave use the
ability
to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid today what
100
times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

Sigh.

Just an old fart reminiscing,

And another one, joining in.

Thanks,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

"Joe Pfeiffer" wrote in message
...
On a shelf above my desk, I have an abacus, my high school slide rule,
my mom's Comptometer,

Hi Joe,
I forgot all about the comptometer. After we came to this county (early
1950's) my mom trained as a comptometer operator. It would certainly be
difficult to explain to somebody how these operators would sit there all
day, invoices in front of them, and, using 7 to 10 fingers simultaneously,
would blindly punch away for 8 straight hours. This is before they invented
'carpal tunnel' syndrome. They were an amazing machine. If I remember, the
only crank was to clear the 12 - 15 place register. All other actions
involved pushing keys.

Thanks for the memory, Joe

Ivan Vegvary

DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2009-04-30, Michael A. Terrell wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:
On 2009-04-30, Ivan Vegvary wrote:

[ ... ]

I bought my Wang used from an engineering competitor. It had an IBM
selectric input/output, along with a flatbed plotter. Two Memorex floppy
drives were attached. One of the floppies (not the drive) went bad and had
to buy a new disc. $ 800 for an 8" floppy (yes, they were floppy in those
days) that had a capacity of about 160K.
Hmm ... soft sectored or hard sectored?

The 8" floppies which I used on my SWTP systems we

250 K (SSSD)
500 K (SSDD)
1 M (DSDD)

but some systems used the 8" floppies as punched card images, so a 128
byte sector would only usefully hold 80 bytes, so that would take a SSSD
from 250K down to 160 K.

I also remember working witht he 8 inch floppies. Connected to my Heath
H-89 at the time

In late 60's we had a MonroeRobot computer. From power off you had to
load everything from punch tape, then load our test data tape to get
results. Our data came from our test equipment via a FlexWriter with a
punch attached. Interesting time in the Navy.

Howard Garner

DoN. Nichols wrote:

No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How
about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How
about VME/VXI?

Don't forget the original pizza box, the Interdata 2901 based bit-slice
machine.

Or the superminis, like the SEL 32/87, ECL, with a 50 -count it- 50 MHz
clock.

Or, a real computer, the EAI 231R (I confess, it was a little before my
time, but there was one in the test area used as part of a test fixture).

I still have a couple of 8" drives that have been wrapped in plastic for
about 30 years. Time to clean up.

Kevin Gallimore

"DoN. Nichols" writes:

No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How
about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How
about VME/VXI?

The first device I ever interfaced to a computer was a "mobile" robot
chassis to a DCC 116 (DG Nova clone). I put "mobile" in quotes because
I learned important lessons about torque requirements from that project.

The second was a TV camera (vidicon!) to UNIBUS.

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:44:58 GMT, "Ivan Vegvary"
wrote:

How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm talking
about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95, Wang,
IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

I stayed with a given technology much longer. Slide rule thru jr year
college, then 4-banger calculator, SR30 (I think), Altair 8800b ($995
32K board with on-board BASIC, twas the department's not mine),
Commodore 64 (thru 2nd round of grad school and into university
teaching), IBM PS/2, Zeos 386SX w/20MB HDD and Hercules graphics card,
then 486 33MHz, then pentium, pentium II, etc.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the ability
to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid today what 100
times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

You ain't kidding. Trying to explain ratios to one of our future
nurses. Asked her "what's larger, 10000/3 or 3/4?" No clue. She
guessed wrong.

The good news is that we still have some good students out there who
understand numbers. They are our future.

Terry

On 2009-05-01, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" writes:

No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How
about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How
about VME/VXI?

The first device I ever interfaced to a computer was a "mobile" robot
chassis to a DCC 116 (DG Nova clone). I put "mobile" in quotes because
I learned important lessons about torque requirements from that project.

The second was a TV camera (vidicon!) to UNIBUS.

Most of what I interfaced in the early days was various
peripherals made for other systems -- and interfaced to early 6800 and
6809 systems.

The first was a digital cassette deck bearing Ampex's name and
on the documentation as well -- but when I called them for parts I found
that they did not remember that they had made it -- until quite a bit of
digging finally got me a replacement pinch roller. I managed to write a
bunch of ROM-resident modules in the Altair 680b to make some sort of
minimal OS -- at least for saving and loading programs and saving and
loading data.

Among other things which I interfaced were bare-bones Diablo
daisywheel printers, and a 10" Calcomp drum plotter.

This of course ignores the terminals and printers which were
just plug in and (perhaps) write a driver to handle special features.

Of course all of that was at home. At work I built a
wire-wrapped 6800 based computer which served to introduce controllable
levels of noise into the signal from a Reticon solid state camera, to
experiment with what tricks could make it possible to recognize things
through lots of visual noise.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2009-04-30, Howard R Garner wrote:

[ ... ]

I also remember working witht he 8 inch floppies. Connected to my Heath
H-89 at the time

Did that one use hard sectored floppies or soft sectored?

In late 60's we had a MonroeRobot computer. From power off you had to
load everything from punch tape, then load our test data tape to get
results. Our data came from our test equipment via a FlexWriter with a
punch attached. Interesting time in the Navy.

That reminds me of one of the earliest of the interfacings that
I did. I did not have a terminal, just an ASCII keyboard, so I worked
on interfacing an 8-level punch Flexowriter as the output device. Lots
of nasty work translating ASCII to what that typewriter mechanism had as
characters, and dealing with the shift or unshift before print whenever
there was a change. The entire code to do that lived in a 256 byte
1702A EPROM, and the translation table from ASCII to the weird
characterset the Flexowriter used occupied a second 1702A. Needless to
say, the code was written in 6800 assembly language -- and then I had to
hand assemble it, because I didn't have enough RAM or an assembler and
editor that early in the game. :-)

Things went fine until the anodizing on the Oliver Audio optical
punched tape reader broke down, and the Flexowriter cranked 240 VAC into
the 680b. I did manage to get it working again -- but close to 100%
chip fatality on the CPU board and front panel -- though the RAM chips
on the 16K board (which cost more than the computer did) did survive,
with just a couple of bus drivers zapped there.

Yes -- BASIC came on a punched tape, and after a couple of
safety copies got worn to too soft, I finally nearly burnt out the punch
on the Flexowriter punching a copy onto Mylar tape. But I still have
that punched tape.

A bit later there was the audio cassette interface board, and
the BASIC plus an editor and assembler on the cassette tapes.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Ivan Vegvary wrote:


"jeff_wisnia" wrote in message
eonecommunications...

Ivan Vegvary wrote:

How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus
minus one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as
someone with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the
ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid
today what 100 times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

Just an old fart reminiscing,

Ivan Vegvary


I took pretty much the same route and I've still got my Curta. But, my
first true digital computer was a single board uncased SYM, a 6502
processor machine with 2K of RAM and a hex display.

I used the Curta mostly for competing in sports car
"time-speed-distance" rallies, and cranked it automatically with a
single revolution motorized drive. I've still got the Curta (with a
hole in the center of it's bottom cover) and the drive/hundredth of a
mile odometer box. G

See center photo he

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/temp/rallying.html

Thanks for the mammaries,

Jeff


Jeff,
Looked at your website!! What an ingenious use of a Curta. Whatever
mad you think of this?

Ivan Vegvary

Well, the Curta was used by lots of rallyists back then, but they all
cranked them by hand and had to keep the cranking in pace with the
odometer indicated distance traveled. There were also some special
purpose circular slide rules made with scales appropriate to those
calculations and even books of tables which did the math for you.

So, it didn't eggsackly take Nobel prize grade thinking to let the
odometer's progress control the cranking of the Curta via a little PM dc
motor and worm drive reduction gearing. I stuck a one way roller clutch
in the connection between the motor drive and the Curta so I could still
crank it by hand without having to remove it from its location.

I got lucky because the odometer in that '55 Chrysler had a shaft in it
which rotated 100 times per mile so all I had to do was mount a little
cam on it which tripped a microswitch to trigger a single rotation of
the Curta. A latching relay and a cam tripped microswitch on the drive's
output shaft made the Curta make exactly one revolution each time the
odometer's microswitch cycled.

Enough already. G

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
The speed of light is 1.8*10^12 furlongs per fortnight.

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:26:42 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:


Ivan Vegvary wrote:

"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone
with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the
ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid
today what 100 times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

You left out teletype connected to PDP 8/L minicomputer.

You are so right, Jim. Digital Equipment Corporation was a big player. I
got to use one for a few months back in 1972. I also forgot to mention
Radio Shack's tandy computer.


Still have my MC-10 micro color computer and my co-co2 (with prom
burner, a-dos dual 1.2 floppies, OS9 operating system and the full
load.

No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How
about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How
about VME/VXI?

On 2009-04-30, Ivan Vegvary wrote:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2009-04-30, Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking
about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang,
IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

Slide rules (many over the years), Best current one is a 20"
mahogany and ivory K&E, (and for fun a 36" store demo
Picket log-log.)

Always wanted a 20" or a 8" plus diameter circular rule. When I saw them in
pawn shops, I still could not afford it. it.

This one was abandoned by a retired worker where I was.

I never got a cylindrical slide rule, but I now have a pocket
watch format circular slide rule made in Russia which I got from eBay a
few years ago.

Probably the slide rule which got the most use was one from
Lafayette radio (remember them) -- a rather nice log-log duplex which
had marginal cursor life, so I adapted a replacement cursor for a K&E to
it. It had to be shimmed with some thin plastic sheet because the rule
body was a little thicker than the K&E was.

That Lafayette was the one which nearly got me arrested. I was
living in a rooming house while working for Transitron in Wakefield
Mass, and felt like a Coke at about 11:00 PM. So, I walked down the
stairs, about a block to the corner gas station, and dropped a nickel in
the machine (one of the slide the bottle through a maze to the exit
hatch style).

When I got my Coke, and turned around, I found myself facing an
expanse of blue police uniform. (They hired them *big* there. :-)

He asked me a long string of questions, which I answered, and
when I was figuring that he had run out of questions, and I might be
able to get back before the Coke got too hot, he snaps: "O.K. Let's
see that knife you have!"

"What knife?"

"Don't play cute with me -- *that* knife!" as he points to the
leather slide rule scabbard hanging from my belt.

So -- I open the case, gently draw the sliderule from it, and
present it to him supported on my palms.

His jaw dropped, he turned, and got in his patrol car and drove
off without a word. :-)

[ ... list snipped ... ]

From the above, it looks like you've done it all!!

Actually -- no. Among other things, I never had an Intel 8080
based system (nor a Zilog Z80 based system), nor one which ran CP/M.
After my homebrew minimal OS built around a digital cassette tape drive,
I moved on to the SWTP 6800 and 6809 with SSB's (Smoke Signal
Broadcasting's) DOS-68 and DOS-69, and then on to OS-9 for the 6809
system.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone
with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the
ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid
today what 100 times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.
You left out teletype connected to PDP 8/L minicomputer.
You are so right, Jim. Digital Equipment Corporation was a big player. I
got to use one for a few months back in 1972. I also forgot to mention
Radio Shack's tandy computer.


No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How
about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How
about VME/VXI?

Hell yes. I worked as a bench tech debugging
Nova hard disk controllers and shoehorned an
Eclipse into an electron beam lithography system,
Also designed a digital interface to said Eclipse.

I designed a Multibus natural voice speech playback
system used in all the LLNL secure area entry points.

charlie wrote:
"Doug Miller" wrote in message
...
In article , "Michael A.
Terrell" wrote:
No one here has ever played with any Data General computers?
Oh, yes. I learned BASIC programming in high school on a DG Nova II, with
a
whopping 8K of ferrite-core memory. The only I/O device was a teletype
equipped with a paper tape reader/punch. I have fond memories of rebooting
the
box by entering the bootstrap loader, one word at a time, through the
switches
on the front panel.

that's exactly like the wang i used in high school. it also had 8k of core
memory, but had 4 asr33's connected and could run 4 programs at the same
time. i have the same bootstrap memories, but they weren't fond at the time.

Was it running Lawrence Hall of Science BASIC
by any chance?

On Apr 30, 5:04*am, " wrote:
I hate to admit it, but the first computer I "tried to program" was
the Univac 1 and the (Sperry?) Mark IV - all programming was in binary
and short term memory was mercury delay tanks (this in 1956 or so) -
Joel
in Florida

Your memory is bad. There was no Univac I. There was a Univac and
the next model was the Univac 2. Also a word was 12 alphanumeric
charactors and could contain two instructions. The first 3 charactors
were the instruction and the next 3 charactors was the address. 000
to 999. No binary involved. Right on the memory. 10 mercury delay
lines for 1000 words of memory.

Dan

Jim Stewart writes:


I designed a Multibus natural voice speech playback system used in all
the LLNL secure area entry points.

Was that the system with the booths that weighed you? I can't recall the
name now [some Greek god, I think] but a friend was on the design team.


--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2009-04-30, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2009-04-30, Ivan Vegvary wrote:

[ ... ]

I bought my Wang used from an engineering competitor. It had an IBM
selectric input/output, along with a flatbed plotter. Two Memorex floppy
drives were attached. One of the floppies (not the drive) went bad and had
to buy a new disc. $ 800 for an 8" floppy (yes, they were floppy in those
days) that had a capacity of about 160K.

Hmm ... soft sectored or hard sectored?

The 8" floppies which I used on my SWTP systems we

250 K (SSSD)
500 K (SSDD)
1 M (DSDD)

but some systems used the 8" floppies as punched card images, so a 128
byte sector would only usefully hold 80 bytes, so that would take a SSSD
from 250K down to 160 K.

[ ... ]

One of the Metrodata computers used a SMS 8" drive system that held
500K per disk.

O.K. Either SSDD, or DSSD depending.

SSDD soft sectored. I just found a few disks I saved, when we
scrapped the system.


We ran them as master slave, because we could just barely
squeeze everything into 500K and could make a backup every day without
unlocking the CATV headend where the computer was. (The headend was
kept at 65 degrees F, year round) I replaced the master floppy once a
month by moving it from drive 1 to drive 0 and formatting a new disk in
drive 1. Then when the day's backup was made, we archived the old disk
for emergencies. The damn Shugart 801 drives ran 24/7 and wore out in
about two years. Every new drive had a different PC board, so we had to
make several phone calls to get the configuration data every time a
drive failed. The SMS design didn't lift the arm when it wasn't in use,

O.K. This makes it SSDD (Single Sided Double Density), since
the Double Sided drives moved one head against the other closing onto
the surface of the floppy. Those *might* have lasted longer in a clean
environment. (Of course, a bit after the Mt. St. Helens eruption, 8"
(and 5-1/4") floppies were having problems because of the airborne
abrasive dust which it spit out.


The system manager was an idiot. The door to the headend was about
three feet from the back door of the building, where the installers &
techs came and went. Then he decided to use the headend to store bulk
supplies, so you had guys covered with mud & dirt running in and out
several times a day.

so the felt pads would wear out. Then the arm would stick to the disk
and destroy the floppy.

Ouch! I *never* had an 8" floppy drive wear out -- but the OS
and controller lifted the heads when not actively reading or writing.


SMS built lousy equipment. I found out later it was designed as a
word processor for law offices, then they designed an interface board
for the old Motorola Exorcisor bus. that was why the drives didn't lift
the head, the typist was writing directly to the disk, on a continuous
basis.


I *did* have a DSDD 5-1/4" floppy drive die -- but from poor
design. The centering cpu was on a 1/4" shaft, running through two
shoulder style ball bearing assemblies, and secured by the drive pulley
slid onto the shaft, and then a central screw and washer tightened to
grip, followed by a glob of Glyptal to secure it.


Some 5.25" drives were extremely flimsy. I still have over 100 180K,
360K & 1.2 M 5.25" drives. I might even have a few 720K. I think they
made 720K drives for about two weeks, before switching to 360 RPM, and
calling them 1.2M.

I had one new Shugart 400 drive. That was their first SSSD 5.25"
design, and only had 35 tracks. I think I gave it away.


Note that I didn't mention a spacer between the inner races?
The shoulders spaced the outer races out on the cylindrical bore, but
they depended on tightening the screw beyond slip onto the pulley, which
resulted in a serious end load on the bearings. When I discovered the
problem, it was when some new OS disks could not be read (the previous
ones were 8", and these were 5-1/4"). Once I pulled the drive, I could
feel the bearings cogging when I tried to turn the spindle.

So -- I got some new bearings (again with shoulders) did some
measuring, and machined up a spacer (actual metalworking here :-) to go
between the inner races. I left about 0.001" of end float when the
screw through the pulley was cranked down tight -- since the centering
cup was held biased by the centering cone which held the floppy in
place. Once that was done, I got lots of life from the drive. I wish
that I could remember who made that drive. For a long time it was my
only double-sided 5-1/4", and kept company with three single-sided
Shugart 5-1/4" drives (and two 8" DSDD drives on the same system.)

Somewhere I should have a pair of Teac 1/2 height 8" DSDD drives that
don't need 120 VAC.

Hmm .... there was also the one used in one of the sytems which
had a voice-coil servo for head positioning, instead of a stepper motor.
I never had one, but I understand that while they were noticeably faster
on track-to-track seeks, the also needed to be re-aligned fairly often,
while the Shugarts were rock solid as far as alignment goes.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!

"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2009-04-30, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Ivan Vegvary wrote:

"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

[ ... ]

You left out teletype connected to PDP 8/L minicomputer.

[ ... ]

No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How
about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How
about VME/VXI?

Data General Nova (at work, not at home).

Tektronix 6130 based on the National Semiconductor 32016 CPU (at home).

Both my "Cosmos CMS-16/UNX" and my Sun 2/120 used the Intel
Multibus, but not Intel CPUs in either case. Instead
68000 (for the Cosmos), and 68010 (for the Sun 2/120).


I have a pair of Intel rack mount Multibus cabinets out in the shop.
I've never fired them up.


DEC LSI-11 (in the Bridgeport BOSS-3 CNC mill. :-)


I have a box of memory boads for the lsi-aa. They were made by
national Semiconductor. I think they are all 256 KB. about 15 to 20of
them?


Aside from that, I've done a bit of work on a CDC Cyber 70 (but
certainly not at home. :-)


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!