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Metalworking (rec.crafts.metalworking) Discuss various aspects of working with metal, such as machining, welding, metal joining, screwing, casting, hardening/tempering, blacksmithing/forging, spinning and hammer work, sheet metal work. |
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#1
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 |
#2
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 |
#3
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
"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 |
#4
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 --- |
#5
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
"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! |
#6
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 --- |
#7
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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... |
#8
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 |
#9
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 |
#10
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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. |
#11
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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. |
#12
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
"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 |
#13
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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. |
#14
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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. |
#15
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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. |
#16
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
"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 |
#17
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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! |
#18
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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. |
#19
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
"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. |
#20
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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! |
#21
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 |
#22
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 --- |
#23
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 |
#24
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
"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. |
#25
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
"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! |
#26
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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? |
#27
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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#28
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
On 2009-05-01, wrote:
[ ... ] 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. Aha! Another OS-9 user. Are you still using yours? I've let my OS-9 skills get rather rusty with the migration to unix boxen. 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 --- |
#29
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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. |
#30
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 |
#31
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
Jim Stewart wrote: Michael A. Terrell wrote: 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 had the removable cartridge hard drive, and a nine track tape drive in the Nova system I junked. I designed a Multibus natural voice speech playback system used in all the LLNL secure area entry points. Sounds like fun! -- You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense! |
#32
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How about VME/VXI? Sure, I started fooling around with PDP-8's, and worked quite a bit with a PDP-5, a discrete transistor 12-bit machine essentially identical with the PDP-8 (no suffix) except for physical size, the -5 was about twice the size. I also did a bit of work with the LINC, a computer designed at MIT and built by grad students at a summer session there. Some 50+ were built and then shipped back to the home institutions of those students, and were used for many years. Again, 12-bit word width, but ones-complement arithmetic, discrete transistors, XY oscilloscope display and block-oriented 3/4" magnetic tapes. That instruction set was later incorporated into DEC's LINC-8 and PDP-12 systems. All that was at Washington University in St. Louis. I also did some learning on IBM 360's there. Later I worked on PDP-11s, Vaxes and Alpha systems there. I worked with Data General Novas at University of Missouri at Rolla. I built a multiprocessor system with the National Semi 16032 (later renamed the 32016). It ran up to 7 of these computers with a 2 MB common memory and using a Vax 11/780 for I/O. About the time I got it really running well, the faster microvaxes came along, and it was obsolete. It is still in my basement for sentimental reasons. It used the extended Multibus-I standard for connection to the VAX and memory boards, as well as power. We had a Pr1me (that's a numeral one in the middle, not a letter "i") here but I never worked with it. I did work with an Interdata 7/32 which was used to run an insane 3rd party disk controller for our PDP-11s. it enabled us to run Calcomp 40 MB 14" hard drives on our PDP. The instruction set looked a lot like the IBM 360. I think Pr1me was an offshoot of Interdata. I worked on a MicroData microprogrammable minicomputer at Rolla. I even worked on a Vacuuum-tube computer, the Bendix G-15 at Wash U, but we were never able to get it running. The magnetic drum was badly scratched. The first computer I built for myself had an 8008 CPU, but too little memory to do anything worthwhile. I then built an S-100 system with 8080, and then moved up to a Z-80. I had all sorts of stuff interfaced to that, including a Honeywell 14.5" drum printer that was bigger than a chest freezer, 9-track mag tape, a 12" XY display with light pen, and a 10 MB Memorex hard drive. I built a 32-bit AMD bit slice computer on two huge wire wrap boards, but writing the microcode for it was a huge project. I did get it running, and had a bunch of test programs, but it was light years from becoming a usable general-purpose computer. I made a copy of a Nat Semi 32016 CPU and built a working Genix system, but it was insanely slow. many things were 5 times slower than my Z-80! I did use it for at least a year, though. This must have been around 1986, when I got the opportunity to buy a MicroVax CPU board from a broker, and get the rest of the needed stuff from 3rd party vendors. Jon |
#33
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
Jon Elson wrote: Michael A. Terrell wrote: No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How about VME/VXI? Sure, I started fooling around with PDP-8's, and worked quite a bit with a PDP-5, a discrete transistor 12-bit machine essentially identical with the PDP-8 (no suffix) except for physical size, the -5 was about twice the size. I also did a bit of work with the LINC, a computer designed at MIT and built by grad students at a summer session there. Some 50+ were built and then shipped back to the home institutions of those students, and were used for many years. Again, 12-bit word width, but ones-complement arithmetic, discrete transistors, XY oscilloscope display and block-oriented 3/4" magnetic tapes. That instruction set was later incorporated into DEC's LINC-8 and PDP-12 systems. All that was at Washington University in St. Louis. I also did some learning on IBM 360's there. Later I worked on PDP-11s, Vaxes and Alpha systems there. I worked with Data General Novas at University of Missouri at Rolla. I built a multiprocessor system with the National Semi 16032 (later renamed the 32016). It ran up to 7 of these computers with a 2 MB common memory and using a Vax 11/780 for I/O. About the time I got it really running well, the faster microvaxes came along, and it was obsolete. It is still in my basement for sentimental reasons. It used the extended Multibus-I standard for connection to the VAX and memory boards, as well as power. We had a Pr1me (that's a numeral one in the middle, not a letter "i") here but I never worked with it. I did work with an Interdata 7/32 which was used to run an insane 3rd party disk controller for our PDP-11s. it enabled us to run Calcomp 40 MB 14" hard drives on our PDP. The instruction set looked a lot like the IBM 360. I think Pr1me was an offshoot of Interdata. We had a Prime, with an 'I' at Microdyne. A very odd system that handled the MRP, Accounting, sales, personnel & inventory on about 50 terminals. The first time I heard of Prime was Wane Green, a publisher of Amateur Radio magazine 73, and Byte magazine in its early days. he was sold a prime to keep his subscription information, and he went into great deal about all of the system's flaws. Like the fact that the system couldn't reuse drive space from deleted files. I worked on a MicroData microprogrammable minicomputer at Rolla. I even worked on a Vacuuum-tube computer, the Bendix G-15 at Wash U, but we were never able to get it running. The magnetic drum was badly scratched. The first computer I built for myself had an 8008 CPU, but too little memory to do anything worthwhile. I then built an S-100 system with 8080, and then moved up to a Z-80. I had all sorts of stuff interfaced to that, including a Honeywell 14.5" drum printer that was bigger than a chest freezer, 9-track mag tape, a 12" XY display with light pen, and a 10 MB Memorex hard drive. I built a 32-bit AMD bit slice computer on two huge wire wrap boards, but writing the microcode for it was a huge project. I did get it running, and had a bunch of test programs, but it was light years from becoming a usable general-purpose computer. I made a copy of a Nat Semi 32016 CPU and built a working Genix system, but it was insanely slow. many things were 5 times slower than my Z-80! I did use it for at least a year, though. This must have been around 1986, when I got the opportunity to buy a MicroVax CPU board from a broker, and get the rest of the needed stuff from 3rd party vendors. Jon -- You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense! |
#34
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 --- |
#35
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
"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 --- |
#36
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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 --- |
#37
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
"DoN. Nichols" wrote: 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. I have most of two SWTP 6800 systems in the garage, if they weren't damaged aby a leak a few years ago. Somone added a pair of 5.25" floppy drives to one of them. -- You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense! |
#38
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:
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. I've got a couple of promotional circular slide rules. I suppose one of them ought to go in the display... |
#39
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
On 2009-05-01, Michael A. Terrell wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote: 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. I have most of two SWTP 6800 systems in the garage, if they weren't damaged aby a leak a few years ago. Somone added a pair of 5.25" floppy drives to one of them. Hmm ... I wonder which of the floppy controller boards that was? SSB (Smoke Signal Broadcasting) was one of the makers, and they had a neat trick to save address space. The I/O ports were eight groups of 32 addresses separated by 32 blank address spaces. The SSB ROM was wired and programmed to fill all of those 32 byte gaps, so it did not take away anything from what the rest of the system was using. Tricky programming -- and it *had* to be assembly language programming to allow that much control of the address spaces. TSC was another maker of floppy controllers in the early years. IIRC, both started with two 5-1/4" floppies. Later ones would handle double density and double sided, and the final ones would also mix 8" with 5-1/4" ones. Gimix made the best of them in the later days. 4 8" and 4 5-1/4" drives on a single controller. The SSB ones usually had an Indian head in warbonnet as a logo on the board. I don't know what the TSC ones looked like, because I used SSB exclusively. 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 --- |
#40
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Memory Lane, slightly OT
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. |
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