The collected works of kjaer - Page 1

recondas wrote:
VideoToaster4000.jpg

I have an Amiga 4000 Video Toaster that I picked a while back with the intention of getting it going. I never have, and thought I'd see if there was any interest in it before I eBay it.


I could be interested. What might you be looking for?
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WTF, Steve. There isn't a single 68020 in it. I know, I have one.

By that logic, you might as well call the IRIS 3000 a Mac II, because both used a 16 MHz 68020!

Seriously. Calm down. The only thing the PIC, a Mac, and a NeXT have in common are Steve Jobs. Maybe you should try knowing something before posting.

FWIW the Symbolics was one of two original host systems for the PIC. The other was Sun-3. SGI and uVAX (QBUS) were added a little later.

Mine is a 4-slot P-II, but I don't have a host interface.
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Here are a few hasty snapshots I took right after getting it. I bought it as an empty chassis plus an assortment of spare boards. All the necessary parts are accounted for, but I'm not sure how they are configured for a four-slot chassis.

Apologies for the huge size and marginal quality.
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Dennis Nedry wrote:
Woot!

Looks like I'm getting a zSeries after all!



Congratulations, you just bought a boat. You have a good start (better than most get), but there's still a long row to hoe, even if you only run Linux on it. Good luck. You're going to need it.

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Hoo boy.

4860 PCjr (whoopie.)
5086 graphics controller - two of these (why?)
5150 PC (earlier 16-64KB model) - two of these
5160 PC/XT (earlier 64-256KB model)
5161 PC Expansion Chassis - 2x 10 MB ST412, voice communications option, PGA
5170 PC/AT Model 99 - used to be an AT/370, somebody stole the processor before I got it. The 3277/EM card and optional Tek interface are still in it, plus VM/PC on the (failing) hard drive.
5170 PC/AT Model 239 - host for the 5364 S/36 PC
5170 PC/AT Model 339 - later 8 MHz model, I forget what I was doing with this.
5271 PC 3270
5273 AT 3270
5364 System/36 PC - 2x 40 MB, SSP at some release. One drive crash away from becoming a boat anchor. Nobody cares, it's SSP.
6020 ThinkPad PowerPC 800 - pre-GA hardware ("Woodfield"), 66 MHz PPC 603, AIX 4.1.5
6042 ThinkPad PowerPC 850 - AIX 4.1.5
6150 RT PC Model 115 - 3x 70 MB, Megapel, etc. AIX 2.2.1
6868 Intellistation M Pro - 2x 1 GHz PIII, FireGL2, 1 GB RDRAM, Windows 2000
6894 Intellistation Z Pro - 2x 800 MHz Itanium 1, Quadro2
7011 RS/6000 Model 250
7012 RS/6000 Model 360 - AIX 3.2.3
7012 RS/6000 Model 390 - two of these - one with RS/370 processor & channel adapter, AIX 3.2.5
7012 RS/6000 Model 397 - two of these - AIX 4.3.3, used to be home DNS, mail, etc.
7013 RS/6000 Model 591 - R/390 128 MB MCA, AIX 4.3.3
7013 RS/6000 Model J40 - 8x 200 MHz 604 (J50), R/390 - AIX 4.3.3
7025 RS/6000 Model F40 - scrapped, in parts. PSU, processors, memory, planar, whatever.
7025 RS/6000 Model F50 - 4x 332 MHz 604e, 3 GB, R/390, parallel channel, ESCON, AIX 4.3.3
7030 RS/6000 Model 3CT - two of these - AIX 4.3.3, were home DNS, mail, etc. before 397s.
7043 RS/6000 Model 140 - I don't know why I have this.
7043 RS/6000 Model 150 - R/390, AIX 4.3.3
7044 RS/6000 Model 270 - 4x 375 MHz POWER3-II, AIX 5.3
7046 RS/6000 Model B50 - AIX 4.3.3, used to be home web server, Sybase/AS v12
7060 S/390 Multiprise 3000 Model H30
7060 S/390 Multiprise 3000 Model H70
7248 PowerPersonal Model 132 - 166 MHz upgrade processor, Windows NT 4 Workstation (PPC), AIX 4.3.3
7248 PowerPersonal Model 132 - Solaris 2.5.1 PPC, OS/2 Warp PPC (cantankerous)
7437 VM/SP Technical Workstation - precursor to the P/370. Runs VM/SP.
8530 PS/2 Model 30 286 - ISA. PC-DOS. It has an Adlib card in it! Whatever.
8570 PS/2 Model 70 386 - two of them - I might have OS/2 1.1 EE on one. I can't remember.
8580 PS/2 Model 80-071 - ESDI, 16 MHz, 8514/A. AIX PS/2 1.2, OS/2 1.2 EE
8580 PS/2 Model 80-161 - SCSI, Blue Lightning, XGA. OS/2 1.3 EE + Pagemaker 3.0, AIX PS/2 1.3.
8580 PS/2 Model 80-311 - ESDI, 20 MHz, 8514/A. OS/2 1.3 EE, is host system for 7437 processor.
8590 PS/2 Model 90XP - 50 MHz 486, 64 MB, SCO OpenDesktop 3.0
9595 PS/2 Model 95-0MT - 50 MHz 486, 64 MB, 2x 8 port Digiboard, RAID, CD, Exabyte, 2x M-ACPA, blah, blah, OS/2 Warp Connect 3.
8638 PC Server 315 - NEXTSTEP 3.3, used to be my main desktop machine
8639 PC Server 325 - BeOS R5, Solaris 2.5.1, something else.
8640 PC Server 320 - two of these in matching non-IBM minitower chassis - one black (NEXTSTEP 3.3, Windows NT 4 Workstation, OS/2 Warp Connect blue), one white (BeOS R5, Solaris 2.5.1, and I forget the third OS.)
9401 AS/400 Model P03 - tiny black CISC, portable, complete, no OS.
9402 AS/400 Model F02 - white CISC, complete, running, could die at any minute to become useless lump. V2R2, V3R1 on QIC (except no MULIC or tape nr. 1. fnar).
9406 AS/400 Model 500 - big black RISC, two of them. one complete, V4R5; the other, V3R7, scrap.
9406 AS/400e Model 720 - enormous black RISC, complete, V5R1 including system codewords

Does not include accessories, parts, etc.
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leaknoil wrote:

You got me curious so, I opened it up and looked inside. It appears to be something called a HP A4450A Visualize-EG card and it uses the HSC connection. There isn't much on the board actually. Especially for when it was made. I would bet its pretty limited in capability.


The bus it uses is called GSC - general system connect. Electrically it's the same as the HSC found in the server system types.

The EG stands for "Entry Graphics", so yes, it's quite limited. 1280x1024 @ 8bpp, unaccelerated. No double buffering, no overlay planes unless you have an extended memory model. The memory upgrade plugs into the white expansion connector, and makes it somewhat equivalent in function to the Visualize-8. There is also a two-head model with two EVC connectors, which makes use of the unused board area to provide a second full graphics adapter. This is what the empty solder pads are for.

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ohland wrote: I would like to get AIX 1.3 installation and use better documented. http://www.ibmmuseum.com/OhlandL/


Louis;

What information in particular about AIX PS/2 are you still looking for? I have some experience and a few resources.
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techfury90 wrote:
I recently picked up one of these off of CL, but I have a problem with it. I have all the passwords, but the OS seems to be rather... barebones. I have the LIC tape, but I have no idea where I could get a V3R1/2 set. Nice machine though, despite taking forever to IPL. It has 4 320 MB DASD, and 12 MB of RAM in it. Also came with a PS/2 55SX for the console.


I have most of V3R1 on QIC (tapes 2 through 5, missing nr. 1), and a MULIC for a 9404-something from a separate rescue. Maybe we can figure out if there are enough other scroungers out there to pool resources and come up with something more complete? I need some resources (MULIC for starts) for my 9401-P03, which is h/w only at this point.

I also have a bunch of AS/400 stuff on 3480 tape but ISTR it's pretty much all PTFs, SVCs, and CUMs. I have yet to get any of my 3480/3490 equipment together enough to read any of them.

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miod wrote:
But OS/2 1.x could run on a machine without an ABIOS - at least the version distributed by Microsoft. I am not sure IBM intended AIX 1 to be used on non-PS/2 machines.


It can. 1.2.1 was the first to ship with a separate install kernel (and boot disk) for ISA bus PCs. In fact the install can be run and completed on VPC6 but I never managed to get a full multi-user boot out of it afterward.

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IMO the 750 is a terrible chassis. It's an Intel reference design; I have one as an Intellistation Z Pro. It's poorly laid out, full of fitted styrofoam, ugly, fragile, difficult to service, and massively heavy.

It's nothing like ATX inside.
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pmjett wrote:
    a short/failure on the MB to draw enough current to flame the resistor

Any guesses?
mike


This is almost without a doubt the culprit. Your PSU is probably fine. Make sure it's actually a resistor that flamed, and not an inductor.

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eMGee wrote: Another great video — during the product's heyday — has to be the Computer Chronicles episode from 1984 , which also features the similarly MC68K-powered IRIS 3000 , a must-see!


nit: the machine in the Computer Chronicles episode is an IRIS 1200 terminal, loading standalone demos from the floppy disk drive.
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kramlq wrote:
Going back to the original post of this thread, thats actually the reason MS give for killing the IA64 port - reliablity and scalability of x64 is evolving to the mission critical levels needed by industry, therefore making the main selling point of Windows on IA64 somewhat redundant.


I think this is sort of covering up the point that once you take the innate reliability of Windows into account, you're not giving up much by moving from IA64 to x64.

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porter wrote:
What does a "non proper serial console look like"? Anything from any serial port? You may have to press "1" or "2" at the serial console keyboard during critical times in the boot for it to switch to it.


IME only booting the installation media allows you to select a console at boot time, in that way. If you want to change it on a running system, you have to log in as root and run 'chcons'.

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Henry Dorsett Case wrote: 7249-860 RS/6000 860 Risc Laptop, 166MHz PowerPC 603e, AIX 4.1.5
[found it in a hidden corner at work, machine runs but I don't have the root pw. If any fellow nekochan member has an idea where to get an AIX 4.1.5 CD to boot from and get rid of the old pw, let me know ;) ]


FWIW you can use any AIX 4.1.4 or 4.1.5 CD. There isn't a special version for the ThinkPad.
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That's good news!

I have several 3/80 motherboards all exhibiting the same fault - there is a wire-wound inductor next to two large SMT caps (I believe these are electrolytic, but have not looked very closely yet), which are very close to the PSU header. It is overheating (and charring) due to an effective dead short on the -12V rail. I haven't yet identified the failing cap(s). Out of curiosity, which two caps did you replace?

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zmttoxics wrote:
Edit: The tech docs for the SPARCStorage 214 RSM seem to line up with those pictured.


It is an RSM. JBOD. I hate those things, the canisters are terrible. We had about a 75% failure rate on the eject levers, which would get stuck and prevent us from removing drives.

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GL1zdA wrote:
Thanks for identification. I was going to get it for the drives (it would cost me nearly nothing with local pick up), but it seems these are HVD drives which makes them pretty useless.


ISTR they're actually SE drives behind a differential bridge. You might want to check the model of the drives before giving up... assuming you can eject them.

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VenomousPinecone wrote:
zmttoxics wrote:
Was not related to the bumping, but the hunting down of current owners of crimsons and asking for theirs.


That may very well be the only way to find one these days. If I was that tenacious/obsessive it is the route I would follow. He may have got a different result had he offered a couple grand for a crimson.


There's a dude who keeps emailing me about once every six months asking if I've changed my mind about not being interested in selling my Pixar machine. Honestly the tactic is just irritating enough that I'm tempted to not tell him about it if I do ever decide to get rid.

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The SS20 is one of those machines that has great form-factor karma, like the Mac SE/30 and original Indigo. Please don't ask me to define it any more concretely than that; I don't think I can.

The SS20 is the first unix machine I was ever responsible for. One was a four-head dual SM71 workstation, the other was a dual SM52X server with 30 GB in an SSA110. Except for the SSA110, I've since assembled complete replicas of both of them. I'd actually kind of like to find one of these arrays in working condition, locally, even though it's barely more than a boat anchor at this point. I had a few opportunities in years past but never quite convinced myself to pull the trigger while I had the chance.

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n1mr0d wrote:
bjornl wrote:
Maybe I should make a FrankenCrimson. Onyx machine with Crimson front.

Please don't do that


He could sell it on eBay - L@@K R4R3 PROTOTYPE SNMP BABY. "Of course it's a Crimson, it says so right on the front."

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Putting nine drives into a single RAID5 is arguably suboptimal.

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bri3d wrote:
I've seen hundreds of drives (with tens of hot-spares, to try to avoid the multiple failure situation) in RAID5 arrays that perform just fine. It's very common on the high end. People who want a little extra insurance will generally RAID0 smaller RAID5 groups (so that each group can withstand a failure, making the array resistant to several simultaneous failures).


I don't think you've looked very closely at what is actually going on with these huge RAID5 systems though. There may be hundreds of drives in the cabinet, but they're configured as multiple RAID5s, with maybe six drives per array... backed by multiple back-end controllers, massive RAM cache, and lots of MIPS to keep the performance up. The Hitachi Freedom, STK VSS, and IBM DS8100 all work this way, as does the EMC Symmetrix (if you've configured it in RAID5 mode).

Part of the problem is that SCSI (and FCAL) performance does not scale linearly with the number of targets. The bus saturates due to command block overhead after five or six targets. I was going to point this out, but it is bus dependent - e.g. IBM SSA does not exhibit this characteristic in the same way. With 1.5 TB drives it is unlikely the OP is using SCSI or FCAL (or SSA!). SATA was my guess, and that's a port architecture that would scale depending on controller architecture/design.

I still wouldn't put nine drives in a single RAID5 group, even if I weren't convinced RAID5 is a dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.

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toxygen wrote: I'm thinking about leaving current setup: 7 disks in raid5 with ext3 as it is and buying one more disk, so I can build another array with xfs on top of lvm on top of raid5 on top of 3 disks.
And over time, I'll try to migrate stuff from old array to new one with simultaneously extending it.


Just so you don't get surprised by this later - you can't grow a RAID5 set by adding a disk to it without rebuilding it from scratch, unless you want your original RAID5 with an unprotected disk tacked on the end of it.
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I have two. One is a pre-GA model.

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hamei wrote:
By the time spreadsheets were common, 1-2-3 was just as graphical.


"By the time spreadsheets were common"? Seriously? VisiCalc was THE killer app for microcomputers in the early '80s, to say nothing of how successful MultiPlan and 1-2-3 were. Excel on Windows was nearly ten years after VisiCalc popularized the spreadsheet idea.

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hamei wrote:
Sure, but Visicalc sold a total of one million copies over its entire lifetime, give or take a dozen. Nowadays Mickeysoft wouldn't even fire up the printer for software that only sold a million copies.


When you take into account the orders of magnitude difference in total market size for personal computer software between 1982 and now, I maintain that it is still a relevant comparison.

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http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images ... st-ipl.png

Still MCA.

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I also have the media.

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I'm not sure I ever thought I would be able to make this happen.

Attachment:
File comment: Sun 100U, 150U, etc.
100u-med.jpeg
100u-med.jpeg [ 102.07 KiB | Viewed 326 times ]


Celebrate with me.

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They came from the estate of a former Sun employee in Atlanta. The 100U is complete and will probably run. I am not in so much of a hurry to switch things on that I won't do a thorough checkout first. The 150U is currently an empty chassis, but all the parts are accounted for and so there's every indication it can be returned to working condition as well. I think the 8" SMD drives and 4-track QIC11 are the biggest unknowns at this point.

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MisterDNA wrote:
I wish I could go get it. The MI boardset would go straight into my R10K I2, though, while the R4400 would get the SI board and go to a friend.


I have a big pile of SI boards if you need one.

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No, the 3650 was totally separate.

I'm not sure what the deal is with the "U". Conventional wisdom seems to have it that the "U" is a sort of post hoc designator for a 100 or 150 that had been upgraded with a Sun-2 (68010) CPU at some point during its life. However, both of mine are clearly designated "U" on the model tag, without any indication this was added later. They're proper Sun-1 models (with Sun-2 processors); not prototypes. The distinguishing characteristic is the bwone framebuffer, which---unlike the Sun-2's bwtwo---lacks the Sun-2 serial keyboard and mouse interfaces, and does not attach to the P2 bus (no DVMA).

The 150U has the cgone color framebuffer and skyFFP, even.

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eMGee wrote:
That looks great and very clean indeed! (More pictures would be greatly appreciated.) The Sun mice haven't changed much over the years, that mouse looks almost identical to the one that I use with my SPARCstation 5 (is it one of those early optical ones like mine?)


More pictures will come eventually. I have a lot of pictures of a lot of equipment I owe a lot of people.

The mouse is optical, but actually bears little more than an outward resemblance to the newer mice. The Sun-1 mouse actually attaches to the same 16-bit parallel port as the keyboard. It didn't become a serial mouse (and thus like all the later mice) until the Sun-2. The pad is also different, though I'm not sure yet if the differences are meaningful.

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SAQ wrote:
Yes, but since it is only 1-bit mono you only have to worry about the green for this application, although you might want to wire them all up so you can use it on a color VAXstation.


I am pretty sure the cables are wired differently for color vs. monochrome framebuffers, i.e. the monochrome output is not on the same pin as any of R, G, or B. Somebody should double-check me on it, though.

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pentium wrote: Bit of a stroke of luck.
I have located IBM's QIC tape option for the PS/2. If I recall, 1.3 came in both floppy and tape form, right?
What are the chances I can rebuild a distro tape?


That depends on what you expect "distro tape" means.
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Anybody on the board have direct experience with Intergraph Clipper workstations?

I have recently acquired one which is being contrary, and it'd be nice if there were somebody I could chat with about what it OUGHT to be doing. Basically it's switching on, but otherwise showing no further sign of life. It's possible I have something hooked up wrong, I suppose. I briefly had the monitor in sync with no picture, but now I can't even get that much (it may have been a fluke to begin with).

FWIW it's a 2700-series.
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Okay, that's good to know.

What do you know about the monitor requirements and connector pinout? It has a 13W3 and the source I found suggests it's separate (composite H/V) sync, with the same pinout as a Sun. But I have no reason to believe this is necessarily accurate. I have another (older) 2000-series on its way, that looks like it has a 5W5 video connector, which I've never seen anything similar to before, but suggests it may use separate H and V sync, in which case I'm not going to get anywhere with the Sun cable.

Is there a way to get it to respond on a serial port? That would tell me at least a little until I work out the video signal requirements. My initial attempts got nothing, and I'm not entirely sure I didn't dork something up while I was sucking dust out of it (it was really bad).

I have the keyboard and mouse (and a tablet), so that's not a problem.
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probably... if I had a 'scope, and any indication the system was getting far enough to show the PROM menu.
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I just did a quick inspection of the framebuffer board artwork - looks like the 13W3 is wired with (at least) pins 2, 4, and 5 (in addition to A1, A2, and A3) which, if they are carrying separate H and V sync, should be feasible for successful combinatoric testing. I'll have to think about how to come up with a convenient test rig for it, though. Perhaps if I stare at the Fry's parts shelves for long enough, something will become apparent.

The fact that pins 2, 4, and 5 are wired at all strongly suggests my information about the Intergraph 13W3 pinout is bad (or at least not applicable to a machine of this vintage).
:OnyxR: :IRIS3130: :IRIS2400: :Onyx: :ChallengeL: :4D220VGX: :Indigo: :Octane: :Cube: :Indigo2IMP: :Indigo2: :Indy: