Date : Mon, 06 Mar 2006 14:26:18 +0000
From : Fragula <fragula@...>
Subject: Re: Warning: Sad case on list!
Jules Richardson wrote:
> Ha ha! That ACW is still going strong, and it acquired a sibling not so
> long ago - hopefully they won't start breeding!
Heh. I don't think you'd have much trouble finding homes for the
puppies. ACW's are far to the right on the cool wall, apart from the
noise and heat.. I think i might try grafting a modern SCSI drive into
mine to make it more user friendly. Or should that be less of a H&S
infringement!
>> Uhhh.. You mean as a groundskeeper, in the park, no? ;->
> Actually, that wouldn't be so bad either - place looks like a jungle...
Gahh. I meant "gamekeeper", but things got garbled betwixt brain and
fingers. Happens a lot these days. And now I can't remember why it was
"Gamekeeper", there was a fairly subtle reference in there someplace,
but I can't figure it out myself now. Some bit of Station X trivia.
> Actually, I'm not against doing cool stuff with machines that are still
> dead easy to come by like beebs - hence the image wall project
You were serious about that? Ohh.. I wrote some code that ran across 4
beebs once. Well actually it only ran on one, and outputted VDU codes
via the RS423 to 3 other machines that had their graphics origin
relocated to +1280 or/and +1024 respectively. Can't remember quite why,
but there was a perfectly good reason for it. Looked good on 4 stacked Cubs.
> and the
> idea of chaining lots of beebs together to render fractals...
I've got BASIC basic (its fairly basic, and written in BBC BASIC, ported
to ISO Pascal too, which I did *purely* because it required a bit of
lateral thinking) Mandelbrot code working back in 1993 or so,
Someplace<tm> on a Master Turbo (no reason I can think of ATM why it
shouldnt run on a B or Master 128. I'll dig that out, unless you have
done one already.
Its not fast though. Summit like 6 hours per screen, and not appreciably
faster in Turbo Pascal. Its full floating point/full iteration though,
with no shortcuts. Maybe when I get my sea-legs back I'll do it in
"Legal" 6502 assembler.
> Heh heh... I still have a couple, would love to find one of the more
> impressive Amigas for the museum though - I think we only have A500 and
> A1200s :-(
Hmm.. I should have a B1000 kicking around Someplace<tm> It looks the
bats on the outside, but is a fairly basic machine internally. I can't
remember if it has ISA slots as well as the native ones, or not. Then
again, i'm not sure whether thats impressive or not.. Used to know a
chap called Justin who had an A600 that used to do MPEG playback and all
sorts, had an '040, about 32M of RAM, and a gig or two of hard disk, and
that was back then! (around 94!!!) He used to cycle around with it in a
shoulder bag.
> Actually, presumably the PET/FIT can RAM-test a BBC micro
> (documentation's not handy for me to look that up)
Err.. Yes, at least the baby version could. (Wish I had kept that!)
> Urgh, picked up a pair of Sun E6500s a while back, with 14GB of RAM
Ouch! Switch it off! They have proper ECC!
> Worst PDP is going to be the DECSystem 570 when we get it running, as I
> think that's got 4MB on it - start it up first thing and it might be
> operational by lunchtime!
Heh.. We used to have a VAX6400 cluster at work Gone now, thank heavens.
Don't know why I'm not a fan of VAXes, but they never stuck for some
reason. They probably should have.
> Ahhh, I think I know the board you mean. Can't for the life of me
> remember what it's called now, but we have one just like that (still in
> its original box too!)
I have a photo someplace.. Hang on.
<clicketty click>
http://www.hyperdark.org/deskdaleks/
No that's not it...
Ahh.. http://www.hyperdark.org/linkedimages/otherputers/ will have to do
for pr0n for now.. I know I have photos of that Intel board someplace tho.
>> A MGT Sam Coupe,
And of that, maybe.
> I've been trying to find us one of those for ages -
This one turned up for £20 sobs in a boot sale a few years ago.
> they're really difficult to come by.
You just missed one ->
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8769303133
> We've got just about everything Sinclair right
> from the days when he was making amplifier chips,
I have, or at least used to have, a Project 60 or 70. The black preamp
with the slidy-along controls.. Probably Somewhere<tm> still.
> so the 'super spectrum' would make a nice addition!
I'm thinking....
You know where MGT were based?
>> a TRS-80 Model 4 with 3 disk drives and IIRC 128K of RAM
> I'm forever tripping over TRS-80s! We seem to get offered no end of
> those for some reason; I'm amazed there are so many about.
Yup. Well there were not so many around here.. This one was from the
Welsh Karate Federation, as payment for moving all their data disks to
PC format.
>> a box of Orics of various flavours (Oric=Tangerine so in the box
>> with a Tanbug-1 , same as AIM-65 i think.
>
> I've got a feeling we're not exactly flush with Orics.
Which ones don't you have?
> We've got one AIM-65 but it's an interesting beastie as it's in a ruggedised
metal
> case -
Ohh.. Mine is just the "hobbyist" bare PCB.
> If you're desperate for a new case for it I'm sure we'll unearth one at
> some point.
BA23's are getting thin on the ground at the mo. Far better to use one
to fix up a uPDP IMO.
> Blimey - I'd be very interested to hear of anything you might find.
I'll scan the article next time i go through my old WWs and Micro Users
(i have certain binges you see;-) Also just remembered a few more. The
Torch Unicorn, Graduate, Zep-100. I have two of those 3, but I can't
remember which two.. Both of mine are Z80 based, one is just a board,
the other is an external mini-tower case with a hard disk (currently
not-working) and a floppy etc. as well as the 2p.
> I think (off the top of my head) that brings the number of different
> official second processors around up to 17...
LIST! LIST! LIST! Please.
BTW I know a chap, another FidoNutter way back when, who claims to have
an *386* internal co-pro in his attic. He promised it to me years ago,
but I don't like to nag.
> Deffo be interesting to see - I've got a particular fondness for
> Transputer stuff.
Yep.. it was a fairly elegant little thing.
> That's without counting second processors too... oh, and a handful of
> Torch machines that use the beeb as the I/O processor...
Yep. An aquaintance had one of those given to him. (a big two-tone brown
metal case, with a BBC, a Z80, SASI/SCSI card, MFM convertor the lot
inside.) I spent a day getting it working. Went up there a few months
later and he'd gutted the beeb board out to replace a flakey one in a
standard beeb, given the hard disk (an actual full-height ST506 IIRC) to
his mate (who had a 286PC!) complete with the 1MHz-SASI and ACB4000
board, who it transpired had binned the lot, and then he'd thrown the
case out his backgarden to collect water or sommit! <sigh> I did manage
to get the Z80 board and the keyboard driver PCB out of it, and the
ROMS. But thats all. Found them last night.
> Hopefully I'll have most of it over at Bletchley at some point
Err.. How involved are you with that?
> http://www.patooie.com/temp/32016_copros.jpg
Ohh! Kinky! <nips off to make the bald man cry> Nice.
>> bedroom, where the ACW and a few other select devices live, to an
>> unbearable temperature in less time than the laws of physics indicates
>> is possible from a single 13A socket.
>
> Couple that with the old favourite of having someone physically hold the
> circuit breaker in whilst everything starts up ;-)
Yeh.. I have that problem with the workshop.. Press *and hold* the
breaker on the way in. Once the fans are up and the caps are charged in
the scopes (2x Tektronix 551 dualtrace valve mainframes with 4 off 4 way
beamsplitters at 5MHz. 20Mhz in dual beam mode, and did i mention
all-valve??? :-) The start up current is 25A, drops to about 10 when
everything is warm. I have a 30A feed from the house (which needs
replacing now) but only a 15A breaker, which I use to down the shed (its
brick, ergo its a LAB!) on the way out.
Oh.. You know what the big red button does on the ELs??? LOL. Yeh.. I've
seen it done. BIG time funny as (1) I didn't work there, well I did, but
only doing the LAN in the CAD department nearby (2) I didn't do it and
(3) the person who did press it just kinda had this "what does THIS
button do!" look on their face at the time, decided not to, kinda leaned
on it by mistake, and jumped out of their skin when the comforting warm
"thrum" (it was newish at the time) stopped with a bang.
and (4) Its their own fault for installing it in a corridor outside a
lift. I was waiting in this sorta lobby area opposite, as the headless
chickens ran around with checklists barking at each other, sweating as
they tried to bring it back with all the confidence of a liberal arts
lecturer, trying to unjam a laser printer that has already caught fire.
Life is BLISS sometimes. <sigh>
Go on.. Press the button! :-D
Cheers!
M.