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  1. M

    Raw HDD cloning tool for DOS?

    I've recently had cause to image an IDE disc on a telecoms tester running Windows 95- no USB ports, only boots from A or C. Nowhere to connect a CD-ROM. No onboard LAN (never mind the ability to boot from LAN). Did have a 3.5" 1.44Mb floppy and two PCMCIA slots though. Got the thing imaged by...
  2. M

    Hidden feature of login command

    IIRC with SunOS 4.1.3, if you softlinked blah to rsh then running "blah" would behave as if you typed "rsh blah"...
  3. M

    What is this? Post Photos of Mystery Items Here (vintage computers only)

    Have a look at page 15 of this PDF, subheading "Hawk Attack" https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Practical-Computing/80s/Practical-Computing-1984-07-S-OCR.pdf £1500 back in the day...
  4. M

    Cheap composite monitor

    Toying with getting one of these. Does that screen have three connections - DC power, "reverse" (output flipped L/R) and "AV" ("straight" input)? I assume the monitor will normally use the "AV" input and only switches to the "reverse" input when it detects a signal (which is provided by a...
  5. M

    Old Parallel Port Dongles

    The sentinel dongle was used for lots of products. The only external clue is what's on that sticker, and even then you'd be lucky if the OEM put their name on the sticker, never mind which product it related to. Back in the day, virtually every dongle I saw had someone write the application name...
  6. M

    Emulated parallel printer

    Turning parallel/centronics data into a serial data stream can be done without any coding using the transmit side of a 6402 or AY-3-1015 UART and (if required) a suitable TTL/RS-232 level shifter. Flow control is easily achieved by tying the appropriate serial handshake line to the appropriate...
  7. M

    Significantly better performance on a Sparcstation 10 with an older ROM?

    ISTR that the boot ROM does the normal basic hardware start up, and then launches the forth interpreter, which runs commands to set things up (including scanning other s-bus cards for setup code) and then finally ends up running the boot command, if boot is enabled, or dropping to the ok prompt...
  8. M

    BACKPACK CD-ROM to BACKPACK HARD DRIVE

    This page seems to indicate that the Backpack hardware will support a CDROM or a hard drive, as they both use the same protocol. https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/blockdev/paride.html If I was experimenting, I'd use a linux box with a parallel port running an older kernel (on an internsl...
  9. M

    Two graphics cards at the same time in an XT

    Because installing a MDA/HGC plus CGA addresses the problem of "Two graphics cards at the same time in an XT" for which CGA+VGA isn't a workable solution.
  10. M

    SPARCstation 2 Installation Guide- help locating?

    You might find that the a replacement 48T02 nvram in that box might not work, as Sun boxes depended on an undocumented feature which was only present in older devices. The fix is to go down the Dremel route rather than replacement route. (Hint: if you damage the 32.768kHz crystal - just solder...
  11. M

    Windows 3.1 and TCP/IP over Ethernet

    Probably doesn't have a NIC onboard Get a 3C589B PCMCIA card+"dongle", appropriate card services drivers for DOS and/or Win3.11 and a driver for the NIC. The 589 is the PCMCIA version of the 3C509. If you are really lucky you might get one with the "combo" dongle - 10Base2 and 10BaseT in the...
  12. M

    Sending a copy of LapLink over Serial

    There may be a more recent version of ZIP (222) at https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=3&l=Z
  13. M

    The curse of fake parts out of China.

    Device id isn't likely to work on anything earlier than late issue 2764 devices. From memory reading the id involves feeding "out of range" voltages to the A9 line amongst other things. "Out of range" meaning something outside the normal 0 to +5V. A device datasheet will give you the details.
  14. M

    File Dupe Checker

    On my linux boxes I use fdupes to look for duplicate files.
  15. M

    110 VAC input to 220 VAC Power Supply

    Many 220V switched mode power supplies are actually capable of doing 110V. Have a look at The 110/220V switch is a single pole switch which connects one of the bridge rectifier terminals (usually the neutral) to the mid point of two capacitors on the DC side of the rectifier. This turns the...
  16. M

    How reset NVRAM on SUN Fire V890?

    9600 8N1 is the norm for console ports, but I've had the odd Sun box do silly things with the baud rate during boot up. What I saw was the initial bootup at 9600 8N1 and then before the boot command executed, the speed changed to something else resulting in crap on the terminal. When the dots...
  17. M

    Maxtor 7120AT jumper settings.

    To be honest, If I were going to extract data of that type of disc I would use my P3 "archiver" Linux box (Slackware 14.2) and connect the drive directly to an IDE port, and then use dd to dump each individual partition. If dd failed I'd use ddrescue to recover as much data as possible. I warn...
  18. M

    Unix printing problems

    With a laser printer (or any other "page rather than line printer) if you are sending plain text you may have to add a FF character or an equivalent "next page" to get the printer to print and eject the sheet of paper. You might be able to do that from printcap as some form of page footer or...
  19. M

    My daughter can "hear" CRTs; impacts enjoyment of retro

    I have a spectrum analyser app on my phone - when the old (PAL) CRT TV gets turned on, there is a definite peak at around 15 point mumble kHz, which, being an old git, for me is inaudible.
  20. M

    What is this? Post Photos of Mystery Items Here (vintage computers only)

    After having a probe around the Tektronix 1990 catalog (from bitsavers.org) , I'm thinking it might be a card taken from a TC-1000 or TC-2000 comms/network analyser. Good luck getting any further info, with specialist stuff that age, it's feast or famine. (by the way it looks as if tektronix...
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