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General Stuff(tm)

Blogs & guides and tales of woo by forum members.
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stephen_usher
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Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

Thanks!
Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
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stephen_usher
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Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

Anyway, before I get on with the FP memory issue I decided that it was more important to verify that everything I had lined up for the Falcon, i.e. monitor, speakers etc. all worked together.

Thankfully it works a treat...

IMG_2792.jpg

The speakers I rescued from work last December seem pretty decent quality, sound wise, too.
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Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
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stephen_usher
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Joined: 13 Nov 2017 19:19
Location: Oxford, UK.

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

I think that I may even get around to starting on the Apricot FP CPU board tomorrow. I did get my (dwindling) stock of 16pin sockets down from the loft this evening.
Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
Top
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stephen_usher
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Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

Well, no Apricot repair today.

I had an e-mail at work asking around if anyone could help recover some data of a DDS-1 DAT tape (scientific data) written on a VMS machine. Well, we have an old DAT drive on a shelf at work and I have old Sun SPARCstations here, so I offered to help.

To cut a long story short, my workbench is now home to my SPARCstation IPC.

Oh, and I tried to get NIS working better on my home server, so I rebooted it... And GRUB now crashes out, so I'm going to have to fix that first.

*sigh*

Down the rabbit hole we go!
Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
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rubber_jonnie
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Location: Essex

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by rubber_jonnie »

stephen_usher wrote: 13 Sep 2022 14:22 Well, no Apricot repair today.

I had an e-mail at work asking around if anyone could help recover some data of a DDS-1 DAT tape (scientific data) written on a VMS machine. Well, we have an old DAT drive on a shelf at work and I have old Sun SPARCstations here, so I offered to help.

To cut a long story short, my workbench is now home to my SPARCstation IPC.

Oh, and I tried to get NIS working better on my home server, so I rebooted it... And GRUB now crashes out, so I'm going to have to fix that first.

*sigh*

Down the rabbit hole we go!
I got tired of rabbit holes, hence my multi server Windows domain is no more and I will never do it again. The worst part was recovering Exchange whenever something went down, bye bye weekends.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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stephen_usher
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Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

Well, it seems it's a bug in Grub2, which is fixed in a version later than the one used in the distro (which doesn't help me), where with newer xfs filesystem versions the loaded miscalculates offsets in the data structure and hence reads garbage. So, basically unsolvable.

So, I'm having to rebuild the root filesystem as an ext4 one and rsync the backup copy over to the original. Then I can attempt to re-install Grub2.
Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
Top
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stephen_usher
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Posts: 7439
Joined: 13 Nov 2017 19:19
Location: Oxford, UK.

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

Well, the kernel boots... But that's as far as it gets. I think I'm going to gave to rebuild the initrd.img with the new fstab.
Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
Top
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stephen_usher
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Posts: 7439
Joined: 13 Nov 2017 19:19
Location: Oxford, UK.

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

Got it working. Phew!
Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
Top
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exxos
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Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by exxos »

stephen_usher wrote: 13 Sep 2022 19:15 Got it working. Phew!
:bravo:
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stephen_usher
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Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

And for tonight's trick...

Extract files written on a VAX/VMS system stored on a DDS-1 DAT tape 30 years ago using a Sun SPARCstation IPC running SunOS 4.1.4 for a professor in another department...

IMG_2795.jpg

My goodness! I'd forgotten just how slow tape drives are!
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Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
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