Back in the 1970's Paul Pierce used a D/A converter on a PDP-11 at the UW
Computer Systems Lab to generate music much like early PC sound cards did
-- by combining harmonics in various ratios. Although he happened to have
used RT-11, there is no reason why it could not be done under Unix. (The
UW Computer Systems Lab also had a Votrax).
So, sure, you could, with an A/D and D/A converter do something like
that. I am not sure that the various emulators have done emulation for A/D
or D/A, but in principle, it ought to be possible.
AC coupling (via a capacitor) of the input or output would remove any
concerns about the relatively high DC voltages. Besides, input signals
ordinarily come into the grids of vacuum tube circuits by way of a
transformer. Ditto for outputs from tube circuits.
Jay Jaeger
At 05:37 PM 12/9/2008 -0800, Carl Lowenstein wrote:
>On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 4:00 PM, Ross Tucker <rjtucke(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear all,
> > (This has got to be the strangest cross-post I've ever done.)
> >
> > I have just taken a bet from a friend to challenge my geekiness. I was
> > telling him about my love of Vintage Technology and he proposed that I
> > combine two hitherto separate hobbies and see what happens. The
> > topics: the DEC PDP-11 minicomputer (vintage: 1970s) and vacuum-tube
> > ham radios (vintage: 1960s). I do sincerely apologize for
> > cross-posting, but I am rather younger than either of these
> > technologies (vintage: 1984) and this seems like a monumental
> > challenge.
> >
> > My question for y'all: how could I possibly design+build a project
> > that uses both of these technologies? My thought is to port some radio
> > receiver Digital Signal Processing (DSP) application into PDP-11
> > assembler, compile and run it via emulator on my PC, then use it with
> > the vacuum-tube regenerative receiver that I built a few years ago...
> > Does anybody know if PDP-11 UNIXes even had the capability for a
> > "sound card"?
>
>Well, you could look at "Votrax" on Wikipedia. Allegedly, the first
>words spoken by a Unix system at Bell Labs, using its Votrax
>synthesizer, were "file not found".
>
>Things that are now known as "sound cards" were called A:D and D:A
>converters back in those days. And there were a fair variety of them
>available for both Unibus and Qbus systems.
>
> > Or, to get ambitious, I would LOVE to design some
> > interface circuitry between PDP-11 digital circuitry and vacuum-tube
> > electronics... The challenges are legion: the tube side of the circuit
> > operates around 350V DC levels with radio-frequency (RF) signals at 7
> > MHz (almost the clock rate of some PDP-11s!) and I don't have the DEC
> > Handbooks, but I'm pretty sure that even those ancient pre-TTL
> > circuits operate below 350V!
>
>The vacuum-tube circuits may be running from 350 VDC but somewhere
>there are low-level inputs from which everything is amplified. Think
>microphone.
>
> carl
>--
> carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
> clowenstein(a)ucsd.edu
>_______________________________________________
>PUPS mailing list
>PUPS(a)minnie.tuhs.org
>https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/pups
---
Jay R. Jaeger The Computer Collection
cube1(a)charter.net
Sorry, this is a bit off-topic, but I'm not sure of anywhere better to
ask.
I used to have a number of HLH Orion machines, which were superminis
(they ran BSD 4.2 / 4.3) made in the UK in the 80s and very early
90s. A friend of mine still has some, which I suspect may be the last
ones extant, and a mass of documentation & media for them. He's
retiring soon and needs to find homes for them.
I think they're historically reasonably interesting machines - I
suspect they may have been almost the last significant British
computer design, and the earlier model was quite an interesting
machine, with user-programmable microcode &c (the later model was, I
think, not so interesting, if a lot faster).
Does anyone know of any museum-type places which might be able to
offer them a home? They are still working (we think, he needs to turn
them on). I'm thinking of approaching the Bletchley Park people, but
I'm wondering if anyone here has any better leads.
Thanks!
--tim
Hi all
the v7 rl02 dsk from archive , seems to be missing the /usr/sys , any ideas on how to restore it ? ,
also in the v7 as man page , there's reference to “unix assembler manual” by DMR , which I tried to locate without luck , the only thing available is the assembler reference manual , in v7 manual volume 2 , is it by any chance same documents under different name ? .
thanks in advance for the help
zmkm
_________________________________________________________________
Get more from your digital life. Find out how.
http://www.windowslive.com/default.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Home2_082008
About one year ago I found installation tapes for System III for the VAX
somewhere on the Net. Unfortunately I can't find the original URL on disk
any longer, neither on my bookmarks and a Google search does not find
anything now.
The distribution is available as tap archives, and you can find it on
ftp://ftp.es.embnet.org/pub/misc/os/UNIX/sysIII
As four files.
My questions are:
- as this is the only copy I can find now on the Net, would it
make sense to save it also on TUHS and mirrors?
- the tap tools do not seem to recognize contents (dtp seems to
identify the first file) and I am currently too busy to further investigate.
Could someone with spare time have a look at them?
- a strings of tape1/set1 seems to reveal that it only supports
an RP06 at NEXUS 8 and a TE16 at NEXUS 9. Could someone with more time
have a try at them using SIMH?
Thanks.
j
--
These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first!
José R. Valverde
De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural
Jose R. Valverde wrote:
I don't believe anybody sane would engage in deceptive action at that
level consciously with such big players as IBM. From all the history
of the cases it seems rather that this is a case of a change of
management to unknowledgeable, ambitious managers who paid too much
attention to the UNIX department on the Company and then had to put
a straight face to defend what resulted to be an untenable position.
I am not going to comment on Darl's sanity.
I think that you will find that Darl's problem was paying too little attention to the people who actually understood what was going on, not paying too much attention.
He certainly didn't appear to pay much attention to this:
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/IBM-459-22.pdf
Try to put yourself in Darl's place: you make a decision based on the
promises of some head of department and sue IBM and the world. Then
little by little your move is proven wrong. What can you do? Yes,
say sorry, close the company, fire all workers and get punished for
admitting to a scam. Or you can put a straight face, defend that you do actually believe the unbelievable -and look as a stupid instead- and try to save the company, the workers and your skin
until you can find someone else to take the hot potato.
I think that it was more a case of suing IBM and the world based on what you (at the time) sincerely believed and hoped *must* have happened, and then spending several years and legal theories unsuccessfully trying to find any evidence for it.
Don't let your bad experience with Microsoft spread to all vendors. Some
have managed a long history of delivering on their promises, and Caldera
at the time was one such.
Personally, I think if they had stuck to Ransom Love and endured the
harsh times for a couple of years until the "boom" of Linux they would
have managed a lot better. Not to mention they could have unified UNIX
at last. But there's no way to know now.
One promise that, at the time, Caldera had never delivered on was making a profit.
Caldera did some good things in the Linux world but they were a distinctly second tier player.
Their decision to buy SCO' s UNIX business was a bad one, based largely on emotion not on good business sense (I know this, because I was one of the people that helped sell it to them).
At the time Caldera had no revenue stream but still had some cash from their IPO, SCO had a rapidly declining revenue stream, and bunch of mostly 10 to 15 year old technology which was still in reasonable shape but which wasn't going anywhere. Somehow (with SCO's help) Ransom Love convinced himself that the deal made sense and that (most important of all, because it appealed to his ego) he could succeed where everyone else had failed and somehow unite UNIX and Linux and build a successful business out of it.
Sadly none of that turned out to be true and, had Ransom Love stayed as CEO I suspect that the company would have been out of business by the end of 2003 at the latest.
md
> From: "Jose R. Valverde" <jrvalverde(a)cnb.csic.es>
>
> Following up to recent questions about whether OpenSolaris might be jeopardized
> if SCO didn't have the rights to provide the license, I see that judge Kimball
> has ruled on the case, and in discussing its ruling, he mentions the agreement
> between SCO and Sun.
>
> Particularly he mentions:
>
> > Section 10 of the 2003 Sun Agreement also sets forth SCO's obligation
> > to indemnify Sun for any claim brought against Sun asserting that the
> > Section 4 licensed technology infringes the rights of any third parties.
> > Section 10 further provides that if the intellectual property rights
> > in the technology become the subject of a claim of infringement, SCO
> > shall ensure that Sun has the right to continue to use the technology
> > or replace the technology to make it non-infringing. The provision has
> > not been implicated or applied.
>
> I have to change my opinion on SCO to consider them now UNIX zealots. As
> I read it, I guess Sun was worried by possibly non-ATT code in SVRX, and
> may be by Novell's assertions, so they shielded themselves: if I'm not
> wrong that means OpenSolaris is safe and the responsibility for that relies
> totally on SCO.
You guess Sun was worried about non-ATT code in SVRX? No quite. The SVRX
code in Solaris (if any; and certainly there is plenty) is certainly 100%
ATT-derived, and any non-ATT code in the SVRX code that The SCO Group
passed on to Sun had (by a mere matter of time) to be added to SVRX
after ATT relinquished the original SVRX code and quite after Solaris
branched out of the UNIX System V Release 4, and therefore any non-ATT
(or non-ATT-licenseable) code inside The SCO Group's SVRX certainly is
not inside Solaris, so no worries there.
You forget the The SCO Group was fully engaged in a total FUD campaign,
whose ultimate goal was to cut off Linux support in the Enterprise via
fear, uncertainty and doubt, and whose collateral goal was to make
plenty of money selling bogus Linux licenses and suing everybody in
sight (IBM and The SCO Group's own customers, of course).
Sun needed desperately to find a way to stop losing money, and that
meant making themselves again desirable to the IT market. Sun mayor
rivals were (and are) Microsoft and Linux. Specially Linux, since more
Sun machines are being replaced by Linux than by Windows. So the Sun
strategy was two-fold: release an "opensource" Unix to "steal" the
grassroots support away from Linux, and give money to The SCO Group
so they could keep afloat their FUD campaign against Linux in the
Enterprise. If they could achieve these two goals with one swift move,
much better; and they did: the gave money to The SCO Group to buy a
bogus license to opensource Solaris.
> SCO thus was willing to take any risks regarding third parties with respect
> to opening up SVRX derived Solaris. That was very bold and valiant
Your ingenuity here is shocking.
> My guess is they were for opening SVRX as a way to increase market share
> of UNIX against LINUX but preferred Sun to open _their_ version instead of
> opening SCO's own. At the same time they must have thought that a combined
> attack on Linux would drive most people off Linux towards opensource UNIX
> and that corporate interests would prefer SCO's closed Unixware to Sun's
> open source solution in line with tradition.
Ridiculous. With Solaris the Enterprise has a growth path to big iron.
With UnixWare the Enterprise has a "growth" path from the PC to a bigger
PC.
> Thus SCO move benefits them twice as now they have two open source OSes,
> and should any contributor to SVRX code complain of the open sourcing
> SCO would have to take the blame and has already assumed all
> responsibility.
So, what two "opens source" OSes does The SCO Group have? "Open"-Server
and "Open"-Unix (aka Unixware)? Amazing!
> BTW, nobody seems to have complained about portions of SVRX contributed
> code being in opensolaris, so maybe nobody cared anyway
Nobody cares about OpenSolaris. If you are going to go with Solaris,
open or not, you are going to be paying much more for year-on-year
support to the vendor than the Solaris license costs, so whether it is
open o not is moot for the Enterprise.
> In any case, we
> now know SCO has assumed the defense of OpenSolaris, which is a great
> thing to know.
I do not see it like that at all. The SCO Group has afforded SUN
indemnification in the eventual case the license they sold to them gets
shot, as it is going to happen unless Novell gets its money, either from
the now-bankrupt The SCO Group or from SUN itself (second payment for
the same thing, funny deal there!).
The question here is: the indemnification The SCO Group offered SUN
weights less than smoke: What indemnification can you get from a bankrupt
company? None, that is the answer.
> Or may be they didn't want to but needed so badly Sun's money to follow
> their lawsuit against IBM that they were willing to sell their souls
> (and IP) in the hope of a big win against IBM. Who knows?
That interpretation is much closer to the truth. Except they didn't sell
"their IP", as The SCO Group had none of UNIX copyrights, none of UNIX
IP, they just bought from Novell the UNIX distribution business, but
not the UNIX IP.
> One thing is certain, Caldera/SCO should be thanked for allowing opening
> of so much ancient -and modern- UNIX source code. Their war against Linux
> OTOH is another issue.
Caldera/The SCO Group did no have just title to change the license on the
intellectual property they did not own and which they were not allowed to
re-license with different terms under the "Assets Purchase Agreement"
signed between Caldera and Novell. Therefore, any and all relicensing
done by Caldera of ancient or modern UNIX code is void and null. Unless
Novell comes after the fact and endorses such open-sourcing. Absent Novell
action, The SCO Group actions changing the UNIX license are void.
Novell action in that sense has not happened up to the day of today.
> From: "Gregg C Levine" <hansolofalcon(a)worldnet.att.net>
>
> It would not have impacted any version of Solaris, including the Open one.
> And why you are asking? I am glad you asked. It seems that according to the
> good people at the Sun offices here in the City, that by the time version 9
> was released, that the code base was completely rewritten, and contains
> absolutely nothing from BSD, and most certainly nothing from the original
> creators of UNIX.
That's not saying much. The original creators of UNIX wrote it in assembly
for the PDP-11. Nothing of that is in Solaris, that's true. And BSD is
open-source and legally close-able anytime, so no argument there either.
Now, if "the good people at the Sun offices" are trying to imply there
in no Unix System V code in Solaris, they are lying. Period.
> From: Boyd Lynn Gerber <gerberb(a)zenez.com>
>
> Caldera/SCO was trying to get everything opensourced. They released
> OpenUNIX 8.0 which was UnixWare 7.1.2.
What? Care to show proof? What do you mean by the mention of "OpenUNIX"
in the same paragraph where you say "SCO was trying to get everything
opensourced"? That "OpenUNIX" is proof of the "opensourcing" done at
The SCO Group?
What??
> They had reached an agreement with
> every one and were about to release everything a the big expo in Jan/Feb
> east cost. It was to be a joint IBM/SCO announcement, when IBM suddenly
> decided against it and were addamanly now doing everything to stop it.
Those are not verifiable facts. Rumors and hearsay make no history.
> I am grateful to SCO for their attempt to make UnixWare/OpenUNIX
> opensource. I just wish it had succedded.
What attempts? Vaporware is nothing to be grateful about.
--
Pepe
pepe(a)naleco.com
Following up to recent questions about whether OpenSolaris might be jeopardized
if SCO didn't have the rights to provide the license, I see that judge Kimball
has ruled on the case, and in discussing its ruling, he mentions the agreement
between SCO and Sun.
Particularly he mentions:
> Section 10 of the 2003 Sun Agreement also sets forth SCO's obligation
> to indemnify Sun for any claim brought against Sun asserting that the
> Section 4 licensed technology infringes the rights of any third parties.
> Section 10 further provides that if the intellectual property rights
> in the technology become the subject of a claim of infringement, SCO
> shall ensure that Sun has the right to continue to use the technology
> or replace the technology to make it non-infringing. The provision has
> not been implicated or applied.
I have to change my opinion on SCO to consider them now UNIX zealots. As
I read it, I guess Sun was worried by possibly non-ATT code in SVRX, and
may be by Novell's assertions, so they shielded themselves: if I'm not
wrong that means OpenSolaris is safe and the responsibility for that relies
totally on SCO.
SCO thus was willing to take any risks regarding third parties with respect
to opening up SVRX derived Solaris. That was very bold and valiant (though
seeminglymay be wrong) from them. Why they decided to allow open sourcing
via Sun instead of Unixware is their choice. I guess they thought it would
play better for them to sell a 'closed' Unixware as an 'enhanced' or 'better
product' than open solaris. It also fits within Caldera's previous opening
other ancient UNIX.
My guess is they were for opening SVRX as a way to increase market share
of UNIX against LINUX but preferred Sun to open _their_ version instead of
opening SCO's own. At the same time they must have thought that a combined
attack on Linux would drive most people off Linux towards opensource UNIX
and that corporate interests would prefer SCO's closed Unixware to Sun's
open source solution in line with tradition.
But then comes the last sentence: the issue of opensolaris damage to the
closedness of SVRX was not brought up at trial. May be it wasn't the time
and place, or may be Novell reasoned that it does not matter to them to
offer one open source system (linux) or other (solaris). I'd also guess
given Novell involvement in SuSE that they would have liked to open
SVRX all along but didn't dare to because of possible complains by
existing licensees (like IBM or HP) who might see their licenses as
oblivious, and -most probably- because it was never very clear whether
all code could be open or belonged to them (sort of like Linux going to
GPL3: it's difficult to identify all contributors and ask their permission).
Thus SCO move benefits them twice as now they have two open source OSes,
and should any contributor to SVRX code complain of the open sourcing
SCO would have to take the blame and has already assumed all
responsibility.
BTW, nobody seems to have complained about portions of SVRX contributed
code being in opensolaris, so maybe nobody cared anyway, but it might
also be that they were waiting to see the case unravel. In any case, we
now know SCO has assumed the defense of OpenSolaris, which is a great
thing to know.
My kudos to SCO. They were bolder than I thought. Even if -IMHO- their
strategy against Linux was misled, their willingness to support open
solaris deserves respect.
Or may be they didn't want to but needed so badly Sun's money to follow
their lawsuit against IBM that they were willing to sell their souls
(and IP) in the hope of a big win against IBM. Who knows?
One thing is certain, Caldera/SCO should be thanked for allowing opening
of so much ancient -and modern- UNIX source code. Their war against Linux
OTOH is another issue.
j
--
These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first!
José R. Valverde
De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural
> Are there any legal issues with this or since the company closed down
> its all well and good ?
I've been researching it for some time... At one point you could download
Coherent from ftp.mayn.de which contained a note saying it was OK and that the
sources had been released publicly. I firmly remember seeing that note
long ago. Many others seem to have seen the note and to remember it. But of
course my memory might be deluding me.
The problem is that ftp.mayn.de went down on 2004 and the original archive
was lost. The only copies that survived were the ones at Demon and unixarchive
which contained additional materials but lacked the original release message.
The problem composited when some German? company bought the rights to the
manual and started asking sites to take the mirrors down.
At the time, I remember I had lost my own copy (I'm still looking around on
old disks for it to see if I can recover that notice), but hadn't cared much
because of the existence of the main site. When that was wiped, the copies
at demon and tliquest begot prominence as the only remains. The notice lost
meant that some people started questioning it. Nowadays, some people is
trying to get it released again as open source with a clear statement
(see comp.os.coherent), Andrzej Popielewicz leading the initiative. It
seems all rights to Coherent reverted to Robert Swartz after MWC disappeared:
> On Mar 31, 8:10 pm, Oliver White <sil...(a)callysto.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:26:55 +0200, Markus E Leypold wrote:
> > > A bit difficult to get written permission from an entity that doesn't
> > > exist and Bob Swartz who wasn't really reachable for some time (and
> > > still seems not to be able to make up his mind on the question of a
> > > hobbyist license).
>
> > I was talking to Randall Howard a few days ago and he said that the
> > copyright was sold to Ron Lachman for $30 000. Apparently MWC never
> > bankrupted, simply was shut down because it was loosing too much money.
>
> There been a few posting about the status of the copyrights of
> Coherent and what the status of the assets of Mark Williams Company,
> perhaps I can clarify things.
>
> Mark Williams Company ceased operations and its assets became the
> property of its bank. These assets which included the copyrights to
> all Mark Williams Company's software were subsequently sold to
> Kinetech. I was the person who managed these assets for Kinetech.
> Early this year Kinetech sold all assets of Mark Williams to Open
> Coherent LLC. A company of which I am the manager. The copyrights in
> Coherent remain and are the property of Open Coherent LLC. At this
> point in time we are working on how to making Coherent more generally
> available and there should be more news on this shortly. If there are
> any questions about Coherent or its copyrights I would be happy to
> respond to them.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Robert Swartz
>
Problem is that I can find no trace of said company on Google or Yahoo.
Andrezj claims to have permission to distribute it for personal use, and
has an updated version, 4.2.10ap of the kernel.
He claims
> If You have purchased Coherent , You can of course still use it.
> Otherwise the only authorized(by the owner) versions of Coherent kernel
> can be legally downloaded(but not redistributed), but only for
> noncommercial use , from
>
> http://main2.amu.edu.pl/~apopiele/embed.html
>
> There You will find
> a)rescue floppy package for those , who have problems with installing
> their Coherent 4.2.10 on newer systems
> b) patched (by me) Coherent 4.2.10ap kernel, with support for 64/128MB
> RAM. Originally Coherent 4.2.x supports 16 MB only
>
> Of course You can download legally GNU/GPL/Xfree stuff from
> http://www.tuhs.org , for example X-windows 1.2 or gcc 2.56 etc, which
> was once available for free download from MWC.
> As far as sources/binaries of Coherent available at tuhs, well I do not
> know. The owner knows about it, but he did not comment.
>
> The last sold version of Coherent was 4.2.12. The version 4.2.14 was in
> development phase.
>
> OpenCoherent license is in preparation, but I cannot estimate how long
> will it take.
>
> Andrzej
>
The notice remaining on demon is dated 1995, and things had changed a lot
in one decade:
From Aaron Swartz site (http://www.aaaronsw.com/history/2001) I see
> Sites I Host
>
> * ChicagoForce.org - Star Wars fans unite!
> * OpenCoherent.com - YAOSOS (Yet Another Open-Source Operating System).
> * SwartzFam.com - The Swartz Family Server.
Which supports my memories of Coherent having been released as Open Source.
The Internet Archive contains only two pages of opencoherent.com dated Apr
22, 2001 and May 18, 2001, but both of them contain only
> OpenCoherent
> Coming Soon!
Again, that would point that as early as 2001 the Swartzs were already
intending to open source Coherent, and would justify my memories of an
actual open sourcing notice in ftp.mayn.de but until (if) I can find that
announcement I should suspect my memory.
So, you are on your own, free to guess as much as anyone else. Bob Swartz
or Open Coherent LLC are certainly elusive. That much I could find. I'll
keep on digging if I have time. Personally, I don't quite see any of this
clear at all, but you know, having been a system manager for decades makes
one paranoid.
j
--
These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first!
José R. Valverde
De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural
Hi all,
I just had a try to install Coherent on qemu (once more), and this time
it did work. Formerly it would fail during installation complaining about floppy
disks being unavailable, no root device or some other such error. Now it is
happily finishing configuration using qemu 0.9.1
So, for all of you nostalgics who wanted to have Coherent up and running
again, QEMU can finally run it since release 0.9.1. The distribution disks and
serial number for Coherent are available on a number of sites, as you may know.
j
--
These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first!
José R. Valverde
De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural
