A friend of mine has a DECmate-II word processor. It is in perfect
working order except for one thing. The field encoding the current
date/time has overflowed. It is impossible to set a date/time in the
21st century.
He says that the software in question is a version of WPS-8 for the
PDP-8. It should be possible to fix the date/time problem by dumping
the DECmate's ROM and disassembling the code. It ought not be too
hard to locate the date/time encode/decode routine and come up with a
fix to the time epoch problem.
Is anyone out there familiar with the DECmate-II software? Or, even
better, knows how to get its source code?
Advice greatly appreciated.
-Paul W.
I've just uploaded a couple new items to archive.org that
folks may find interesting:
https://archive.org/details/5ess-2000-switch-es5431-office-data-base-1998https://archive.org/details/5ess-2000-switch-es5432-system-analysis-1998
Linked above are the ES5431 (Office Data Base Installation)
and ES5432 (System Analysis) training CDs as produced by
Bell Laboratories (Lucent era) for the 5ESS-2000 switch.
Among other things, these CDs contain a 5ESS simulator which
you can see a screenshot of here:
https://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=28001.msg269652#m…
I was able to successfully get it to run on Windows 98 SE in
a virtual machine, although did break one rule of archiving
optical media in that I didn't take iso rips. I intend to
throw an old FreeBSD hard disk in that computer sometime soon
and do some proper rips with dd(1). In the meantime,
this means using the above archives presents only a partial
experience in that the Training section of the software
appears to depend on the original discs being inserted.
In any case, the simulator interests me greatly. I intend
to do a little digging around in it as time goes on to see
if there may be traces of 3B20 emulation or DMERT in the
guts. I'm not holding my breath, but who knows. Either way,
it'll be interesting to play with. Thus far I've only
verified the simulator launches, but have done nothing
with it yet. Picked up Steele's Common Lisp (2nd Edition)
in the same eBay session so time will be split between this,
learning Lisp, and plenty of other little oddball projects
I have going, but if I find anything interesting I'll be
sure to share.
Given that Nokia is shedding 5ESS stuff pretty heavily right
now (or so I've heard) I have to wonder if more of this
stuff will start popping up in online market places. Word
over on the telephone forum is that some folks in Nokia
do have an interest in preserving 5ESS knowledge and
materials but are getting the expected apathy and lack of
engagement from higher ups. Hopefully this at least means
Nokia doesn't mind too much this stuff getting archived if
they don't have to do any of the footwork :)
- Matt G.
On Wed Feb 23 16:33, 1994, I turned on the web service on my machine
"minnie", originally minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au, now minnie.tuhs.org (aka
www.tuhs.org). The web service has been running continuously for thirty
years, except for occasional downtimes and hardware/software upgrades.
I think this makes minnie one of the longest running web services
still in existence :-)
For your enjoyment, I've restored a snapshot of the web site from
around mid-1994. It is visible at https://minnie.tuhs.org/94Web/
Some hyperlinks are broken.
## Web Logs
The web logs show me testing the service locally on Feb 23 1994,
with the first international web fetches on Feb 26:
```
sparcserve.cs.adfa.oz.au [Wed Feb 23 16:33:13 1994] GET / HTTP/1.0
sparcserve.cs.adfa.oz.au [Wed Feb 23 16:33:18 1994] GET /BSD.html HTTP/1.0
sparcserve.cs.adfa.oz.au [Wed Feb 23 16:33:20 1994] GET /Images/demon1.gif HTTP/1.0
...
estcs1.estec.esa.nl [Sat Feb 26 01:48:21 1994] GET /BSD-info/BSD.html HTTP/1.0
estcs1.estec.esa.nl [Sat Feb 26 01:48:30 1994] GET /BSD-info/Images/demon1.gif HTTP/1.0
estcs1.estec.esa.nl [Sat Feb 26 01:49:46 1994] GET /BSD-info/cdrom.html HTTP/1.0
shazam.cs.iastate.edu [Sat Feb 26 06:31:20 1994] GET /BSD-info/BSD.html HTTP/1.0
shazam.cs.iastate.edu [Sat Feb 26 06:31:24 1994] GET /BSD-info/Images/demon1.gif HTTP/1.0
dem0nmac.mgh.harvard.edu [Sat Feb 26 06:32:04 1994] GET /BSD-info/BSD.html HTTP/1.0
dem0nmac.mgh.harvard.edu [Sat Feb 26 06:32:10 1994] GET /BSD-info/Images/demon1.gif HTTP/1.0
```
## Minnie to This Point
Minnie originally started life in May 1991 as an FTP server running KA9Q NOS
on an IBM XT with a 30M RLL disk, see https://minnie.tuhs.org/minannounce.txt
By February 1994 Minnie was running FreeBSD 1.0e on a 386DX25 with 500M
of disk space, 8M of RAM and a 10Base2 network connection. I'd received a copy
of the BSDisc Vol.1 No.1 in December 1993. According to the date on the file
`RELNOTES.FreeBSD` on the CD, FreeBSD 1.0e was released on Oct 28 1993.
## The Web Server
I'd gone to a summer conference in Canberra in mid-February 1994 (see
pg. 29 of https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V15.1.pdf
and https://minnie.tuhs.org/94Web/Canberra-AUUG/cauugs94.html, 10am)
and I'd seen the Mosaic web browser in action. With FreeBSD running on
minnie, it seemed like a good idea to set up a web server on her.
NCSA HTTPd server v1.1 had been released at the end of Jan 1994, see
http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1994q1/0282.html
It was the obvious choice to be the web server on minnie.
## Minnie from Then to Now
You can read more about minnie's history and her hardware/software
evolution here: https://minnie.tuhs.org/minnie.html
I obtained the "tuhs.org" domain in May 2000 and switched minnie's
domain name from "minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au" to "minnie.tuhs.org".
Cheers!
Warren
P.S. I couldn't wait until Friday to post this :-)
After learning of Dave's death, a professor I very much enjoyed as a U
of Delaware EE student, I came across this page
https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery9.html
This reminds me of his lectures, the occasional 90 degree turn into who
knows what, but guaranteed to be interesting. And if anyone has a UDel
Hollerith card they're willing to part with, please get in touch. I
have none. :-(
Mike Markowski
