From dfawcus+lists-coff at employees.org Sat May 1 02:49:29 2021 From: dfawcus+lists-coff at employees.org (Derek Fawcus) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2021 17:49:29 +0100 Subject: [COFF] DEC terminal line driver chips? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 09:17:27AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote: > If you look at the schematics for the VT-100 (which are available on > bitsavers) as well as most terminals of the day used the > Motorola MC1488/1489 driver pairs [early on, TI marked them as 75488/75498 > but I doubt you'll see that old]. > > Anyway, for any terminal of those times, I'd be surprised if the later > devices (like VTx20 series) did not them [the issue with these devices is > you need all of 5 and +/- 12 volts]. These terminals are new enough that > they might have used MAX232 (single 5 v power - there are even 3.3v > versions these days). All of these devices are very available online. I > would suggest putting high quality (*i.e.* auget style / machined pins) > sockets. The nice thing about 1488/1489 is that they were doped to fuse > the output section on failure, so just replacing them will in fact > resurrect most serial port failures. Frankly, I never understood why more > manufacturers did not put them in sockets for easy replacement. Well even in 1988 when I entered industry for a year (as an EE), the MAX232 was quite new (looks ike it was introduced in '87), and plenty of designs still used the 1488/1489 chips. I do recall that those I worked with at the time were often produced with turned-pin sockets, specifically to allow the chips to be easily replaced. It seemed to be around 91-92 before the MAX232 was common in new designs, certainly I used it for adhoc test equipment around that period. I guess familarity, and the the time for the design pipeline to flush out may have had a effect, only using it on new designs, or reworks where the PCBs had to be redesigned due to chips going out of production. DF From dot at dotat.at Tue May 11 04:35:32 2021 From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 19:35:32 +0100 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Genix / early 80's VM variants In-Reply-To: References: <20210509195745.GS2329@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: [ COFF not TUHS ] Clem Cole wrote: > On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 3:58 PM Larry McVoy wrote: > > > National couldn't get it together to produce bug free chips or maybe > > we'd all be running that, pretty nice architecture (in theory). > > I've always wondered if a Nat Semi NS32016 based system running in a PC/AT > form factor had appeared that was priced like a PC/AT if that might have > had a chance. Acorn Computers made an odd machine consisting of a BBC micro with a 32016 second processor in a box. (It didn't run a unix-like OS, I'm afraid.) The 32016 was one of the CPUs that inspired the ARM, because its performance was so terrible: it was not able to make good use of the available memory bandwidth. (There wasn't a 68000 second processor because its interrupt latency was too bad to drive the "tube" interface.) http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/ACW.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#New_RISC_architecture Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch https://dotat.at/ Malin, Southeast Hebrides: Cyclonic 4 to 6. Slight or moderate in southeast, moderate or rough in northwest. Showers. Good, occasionally poor. From dave at horsfall.org Wed May 12 07:00:32 2021 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 07:00:32 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] The Z3 Message-ID: A bit of history: on this day in 1941, Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin. Pity it got destroyed when the joint was bombed... -- Dave From rtomek at ceti.pl Wed May 12 08:06:07 2021 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 00:06:07 +0200 Subject: [COFF] The Z3 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20210511220607.GA29303@tau1.ceti.pl> On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 07:00:32AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > A bit of history: on this day in 1941, Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, > the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in > Berlin. > > Pity it got destroyed when the joint was bombed... A pity or not a pity at all... It was a remarkable achievement of engineering but I am happy it did not get appreciation in the eyes of contemporary German authorities. In such case it would inevitably be used to prolong WW2 to detriment of everybody involved. Technology is deeply involved in life and its contorted ways. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From dave at horsfall.org Wed May 12 09:56:24 2021 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 09:56:24 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] The Z3 In-Reply-To: <20210511220607.GA29303@tau1.ceti.pl> References: <20210511220607.GA29303@tau1.ceti.pl> Message-ID: On Wed, 12 May 2021, Tomasz Rola wrote: >> Pity it got destroyed when the joint was bombed... > > A pity or not a pity at all... It was a remarkable achievement of > engineering but I am happy it did not get appreciation in the eyes of > contemporary German authorities. In such case it would inevitably be > used to prolong WW2 to detriment of everybody involved. Well, any technology can be used for malicious purposes; look at how the N*zis employed IBM tabulators with Watson's full knowledge (they went via a Swiss intermediary -- look up "Dehomag" to find the book). > Technology is deeply involved in life and its contorted ways. Indeed... -- Dave From rtomek at ceti.pl Thu May 13 02:55:45 2021 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 18:55:45 +0200 Subject: [COFF] The Z3 In-Reply-To: References: <20210511220607.GA29303@tau1.ceti.pl> Message-ID: <20210512165545.GA8424@tau1.ceti.pl> On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 09:56:24AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Wed, 12 May 2021, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > >>Pity it got destroyed when the joint was bombed... > > > >A pity or not a pity at all... It was a remarkable achievement of > >engineering but I am happy it did not get appreciation in the eyes > >of contemporary German authorities. In such case it would > >inevitably be used to prolong WW2 to detriment of everybody > >involved. > > Well, any technology can be used for malicious purposes; look at how > the N*zis employed IBM tabulators with Watson's full knowledge (they > went via a Swiss intermediary -- look up "Dehomag" to find the > book). Ahem. As a matter of fact, I have once spent a few afternoons reading about exactly this... Actually, I am trying (low priority, leisure activity) to grok punched cards technology (i.e., before arrival of Turing-complete devices). The subject is quite fascinating because so alien (forget about your favorite editors and compilers). It is also interesting to note how modern ways (including warfare and social media) have been rooted in logistics and accounting, all going back to electromechanical tech supporting works being done by big business and administration more than hundred years ago... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Tue May 18 11:33:35 2021 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Tue, 18 May 2021 09:33:35 +0800 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Vint Cerf tests positive for COVID-19. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I’m more impressed by his IMDb! https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0148576/ From: Dave Horsfall Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2020 11:14 AM To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society; Computer Old Farts Followers Subject: Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Vint Cerf tests positive for COVID-19. On Mon, 30 Mar 2020, Dan Cross wrote: > He announced it on Twitter. I'm sure we all wish him well and a speedy > recovery. Note, his tweet says that he is recovering. Indeed. On a whim I did a search for him, and got: Get Vint Cerf With Fast and Free Shipping on eBay. Looking For Vint Cerf? We Have Almost Everything on eBay. I'm sure that he'll be happy to hear that... -- Dave _______________________________________________ COFF mailing list COFF at minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Tue May 18 11:33:33 2021 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Tue, 18 May 2021 09:33:33 +0800 Subject: [COFF] On the rise and fall of Gopher In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01aaede9-2050-437d-a339-1c62e69edf34@PU1APC01FT016.eop-APC01.prod.protection.outlook.com> Back when the ‘answer’ was being handed to us via NeXTSTEP. Full text indexing of all the resources! Kind of funny how Digital and NeXT among others missed that boat. I’ve hacked Altavista desktop search to be publicially available, but I’ve never managed to build a NeXT public search tool thing via gopher. Speaking of, I do host a gopher site, and I do get a fair bit of traffic, although I think it’s mostly crawlers, and people looking for exploits/warez – I’d imagine people running public FTP servers see the same kind of nonsense. gopher2_3.1 builds somewhat easily on 64bit Linux, and even works! … Although I’m not sure that anyone else needs to or really wants to join the gopherspace. From: Michael Kjörling Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2020 5:33 PM To: coff at minnie.tuhs.org Subject: [COFF] On the rise and fall of Gopher The EFF just published an article on the rise and fall of Gopher on their Deeplinks blog. "Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers' Fortresses" https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-gatekeepers-fortresses I thought it might be of interest to people here. -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?” _______________________________________________ COFF mailing list COFF at minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: