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The other year, I tried to build a PC to Apple II joystick adapter according to this schematic: http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/faqs/R029PCA2XRF.GIF As far as I can tell, the [4] and [5] on the PC joystick side really are GND lines misplaced on the diagram. When I plugged this adapter into my...

I am looking for a 5.25" full height front panel, ideally from a deceased hard drive but might consider one from a floppy drive too. It means I'm not looking for a complete hard drive or floppy drive unit, just the front panel. Too bad I traded away the last FH floppy drive panel I had in my...

A while ago I acquired an IBM RT 6151, the desktop model. The 6153 monitor doesn't seem to work, so I got ahold of a 8-bit ISA MDA card which allows me to see the system boots up allright into AIX. However I don't know the root or any other password. Is there some default that I could try? I...

Does anyone have insight in if, which and how floppy disk formats could be partially shared on the same floppy disk? When it comes to so-called flippies (single sided formats like Commodore, Atari, Apple, BBC Micro, very early IBM PC etc), it is rather trivial. Place the format that potentially...

One of my remaining PETs gives me sparkles and smoke. It is the one I previously lifted ROMs and big chips from to verify they all seem OK. I spotted the sparkles come from the diode rectifier (?) bridge in the power supply department, and planned to replace at least the four 1N5402 diodes that...

This past weekend, I decided to play around a little with my Philips P2000c, a "luggable" CP/M machine. Mine is a P2012 which means it is equipped with two 640K QD floppy drives. I got the impression those won't be able to read 160K disks, but since I haven't really tried I don't know if that is...

People sometimes report the ability to get a standard PC to take a 80 track floppy drive of the DD/QD variety, the ones that in native FAT12 format would hold 720K. I have a couple of suitable drives but so far have failed to get them to work as 80 track drives. Most specifically I have a...

Today I've had a PET day. I brought out two 3032 from the basement: one known working and one labeled as "emits smoke". Emits smoke was an understatement. The four big diodes on the power supply part of the motherboard were crackling, smell really badly and have almost corroded all the solder...

I found an article in the magazine InfoWorld, December 1982 about the Japanese computer manufacturer Sord about to enter the US market. What confuses me is they would do it under a different brand name, Socius. See pages 1 and 5. http://books.google.se/books?id=FzAEAAAAMBAJ After further...

I have posted my SWTPC PR-40 printer on the Vintage Computer and Gaming Marketplace. http://marketplace.vintage-computer.com/auction_details.php?auction_id=109253 The auction runs for 14 days. Feel free to spread the word to other forums, mailing lists etc where there may be interested bidders.

Yay, another PET thread! ;-) In this thread, I will summarize the results of checking both Stèphane's and Alex' ROM sets. Both sent me two sets of ROMs: * Stèphane sent me the Basic V2 ROMs (FR) that were present on the motherboard I sold him + Dave's 2532 EPROM's with Basic V2 (DME) sent...

Last year, I set up one of my PET's in a Christmas spirit. I used this picture to send Christmas cards to a few of my friends around the world. I am considering doing it again, perhaps even one better. The actual PET in the picture has been sold, but I've got plenty of other machines to use...

I found two small, grey binders in my basement. On the cover it says Micro Computer User's Manual: They consist of seven sections: Introduction, Installation, Main Board, Display Card, Disk Controller, I/O Cards and Miscellaneous. The contents of each section are quite general. One binder...

A while ago I bought an inexpensive DG One Model 2 laptop, the one which takes 720K 3.5" floppy disks. It came with a copy of MS-DOS 2.11, and everything was fine. A few days ago, I was about to format a floppy disk on the laptop. For some reason it currently didn't remember it had a B: drive...

eBay linkage: http://cgi.ebay.com/_W0QQitemZ160420469681QQ What is the typical production date for one of those C264, C232 and the two (?) C364's? Since my very early TED prototype motherboard (with DB9 joystick ports and card-edge cassette connector) is dated August 1983, I would expect a...

All this PET talk made me go through my pics, of which some I may have posted before. Composite video experiments I built this circuit two and a half years ago: These were the results I obtained from a 40 column PET: I also found a ready-made RF box, but the results were even...

I don't know if anyone else noticed, but I'm missing direct links to the VC Wiki and ditto Marketplace from the VC Forum toolbar above. Those could be placed next to Home, Forum and Blogs. I know there are links from the VC main page, which to some point also is used for Erik's personal...

While searching for something different, I stumbled upon this article originally published in the magazine InfoWorld, March 9 - 1987. Thanks to Google's scanning and indexing, there probably are dozens of similar articles from throughout the 1980's...

Yesterday I purchased some plastic boxes with lots of compartments to sort my small stash of loose components into: small bags and boxes of assorted surplus resistors, diodes, capacitors, connectors, ICs etc. In particular the selection of kilo and megaohm resistors is getting bigger than I...

In case anyone in the UK would be interested, here is a close relative to Tupin's Sony MSX2 computer: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150398867859 Based on my previous experience, MSX stuff usually go "cheap" in the UK. Better hurry up though, only five hours to go at the...