David Goodwin
@davidrgnz.bsky.social
I develop software and mess about with vintage computers. Sometimes I have a go at a bit of astrophotography. @davidg@mastodon.nz, @davidrgnz on twitter
Kermit 95s first time ever doing 24-bit colour! I'm not sure what this is actually *useful* for, but I guess there must be something out there that needs to display more than 256 colours in a terminal at once.
April 16, 2025 at 3:54 AM
Kermit 95s first time ever doing 24-bit colour! I'm not sure what this is actually *useful* for, but I guess there must be something out there that needs to display more than 256 colours in a terminal at once.
It has been *a lot* of work, but 256-colour support in Kermit 95 is finally showing some visible sign of progress! Still a fair bit of work to go to finshin the implementaiton off, like commands and OSC sequence for customisng the colour palette, etc.
April 10, 2025 at 8:08 AM
It has been *a lot* of work, but 256-colour support in Kermit 95 is finally showing some visible sign of progress! Still a fair bit of work to go to finshin the implementaiton off, like commands and OSC sequence for customisng the colour palette, etc.
After replacing a few leaky capacitors in its power supplies, my HP 9000/370 lives! And unlike the /360 I fixed up a week or two back, none of the weird glass tantalum capacitors popped! Now I've just got to sort out some emulated HP-IB drives for it so I can get it up and running an OS.
March 4, 2025 at 5:44 AM
After replacing a few leaky capacitors in its power supplies, my HP 9000/370 lives! And unlike the /360 I fixed up a week or two back, none of the weird glass tantalum capacitors popped! Now I've just got to sort out some emulated HP-IB drives for it so I can get it up and running an OS.
So after all that, the ugly 286 now at least has matching floppy drives, and both of them even work too! 1.2MB on the top, 360K on the bottom. Still a few things left to do on it (like figuring out how to switch turbo on/off, and making the power LED work), but this is enough for one night I think
February 10, 2025 at 8:56 AM
So after all that, the ugly 286 now at least has matching floppy drives, and both of them even work too! 1.2MB on the top, 360K on the bottom. Still a few things left to do on it (like figuring out how to switch turbo on/off, and making the power LED work), but this is enough for one night I think
After cleaning the worm gear a bunch and helping the heads travel the full length of the disk, the Panasonic drive is now working fine too. The ROM diagnostics in this machine were helpful in verifying that it was all working properly.
February 10, 2025 at 8:56 AM
After cleaning the worm gear a bunch and helping the heads travel the full length of the disk, the Panasonic drive is now working fine too. The ROM diagnostics in this machine were helpful in verifying that it was all working properly.
Then the 1.2MB Pansonic JU-475-3A14 I wanted to replace the old yellow drive with was misbehaving. I was sure I'd used this drive recently with a greaseweazle but now it couldn't seek properly past the middle of the disk. It would just start jumping grooves on the worm gear.
February 10, 2025 at 8:56 AM
Then the 1.2MB Pansonic JU-475-3A14 I wanted to replace the old yellow drive with was misbehaving. I was sure I'd used this drive recently with a greaseweazle but now it couldn't seek properly past the middle of the disk. It would just start jumping grooves on the worm gear.
So I set out to replace it with a slightly older Chinon F-502L II. But this drive would only step the heads once during the seek test and again while booting. Couldn't read disks at all. Problem turned out to be the PCB edge connector needing a cleaning. Now it works nicely.
February 10, 2025 at 8:56 AM
So I set out to replace it with a slightly older Chinon F-502L II. But this drive would only step the heads once during the seek test and again while booting. Couldn't read disks at all. Problem turned out to be the PCB edge connector needing a cleaning. Now it works nicely.
What started with a "lets make the floppy drives the same colour" turned out to be a bit more of an ordeal. The black 360K Chinon FZ-502 drive already in there turned out to be no good. The ribbon cable going to one of the heads seems to be slightly damaged.
February 10, 2025 at 8:56 AM
What started with a "lets make the floppy drives the same colour" turned out to be a bit more of an ordeal. The black 360K Chinon FZ-502 drive already in there turned out to be no good. The ribbon cable going to one of the heads seems to be slightly damaged.
So this is what the inside looks like now. The left-most slot, and the two right-most slots are only 8-bit ISA so only the SoundBlaster 2.0 or modem would fit there, but the SoundBlaster is too long for any of those slots. The SIP memory and HDD means only short cards in the three 8-bit ISA slots.
February 9, 2025 at 7:28 PM
So this is what the inside looks like now. The left-most slot, and the two right-most slots are only 8-bit ISA so only the SoundBlaster 2.0 or modem would fit there, but the SoundBlaster is too long for any of those slots. The SIP memory and HDD means only short cards in the three 8-bit ISA slots.
Due to the NIC failure, I had to go digging for an alternate and ended up with an 3Com EtherLink III. A little newer than I'd like, but I don't have all my ISA NICs here with me. I had to switch to a different unfortunately somewhat newer (33.6k) modem too due to space constraints.
February 9, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Due to the NIC failure, I had to go digging for an alternate and ended up with an 3Com EtherLink III. A little newer than I'd like, but I don't have all my ISA NICs here with me. I had to switch to a different unfortunately somewhat newer (33.6k) modem too due to space constraints.
Well, I regretted that NIC for an entirely different reason than anticipated. After the machine had been running fine for 10 minutes or so, I briefly stepped out of the room only to come back to smoke pouring out the computer. Thankfully the computer is fine, but the card is not!
February 9, 2025 at 6:28 AM
Well, I regretted that NIC for an entirely different reason than anticipated. After the machine had been running fine for 10 minutes or so, I briefly stepped out of the room only to come back to smoke pouring out the computer. Thankfully the computer is fine, but the card is not!
I went digging and these are the parts I found. I'll probably regret the NIC choice; its supposed to be NE2000-compatbile though sounds like not perfectly. I've no idea if the RAM works, but if it does it may as well go in. And a black 1.2MB FDD to match the existing 360K drive.
February 9, 2025 at 4:00 AM
I went digging and these are the parts I found. I'll probably regret the NIC choice; its supposed to be NE2000-compatbile though sounds like not perfectly. I've no idea if the RAM works, but if it does it may as well go in. And a black 1.2MB FDD to match the existing 360K drive.
With all the attention I've given the Mitac Turbo XT lately, I guess its time the Ugly 286 was finally given some. While it may be a little rusty, yellowed, and have "Tasman" engraved in the plastic, its not a bad machine overall. 12MHz 286, 10MHz IIT 2C87 FPU, ST-238R RLL HDD, 2MB RAM, VGA.
February 9, 2025 at 3:37 AM
With all the attention I've given the Mitac Turbo XT lately, I guess its time the Ugly 286 was finally given some. While it may be a little rusty, yellowed, and have "Tasman" engraved in the plastic, its not a bad machine overall. 12MHz 286, 10MHz IIT 2C87 FPU, ST-238R RLL HDD, 2MB RAM, VGA.
One last upgrade for the Mitac: a second serial port. In part because I can't think what else I would put a one-port serial card in and I have two of them lying around. This leaves it with one 8-bit ISA slot free, maybe for a sound card someday - one of those adlib clones perhaps.
February 9, 2025 at 2:35 AM
One last upgrade for the Mitac: a second serial port. In part because I can't think what else I would put a one-port serial card in and I have two of them lying around. This leaves it with one 8-bit ISA slot free, maybe for a sound card someday - one of those adlib clones perhaps.
As its 2025, I guess its about time this thing finally got online. I had a dig through the big box of modems, and this one seems suitable enough! Fits right in between the NIC (a far more sensible connectivity option), and the Transteque MFM disk controller for the ST-225 20MB hard disk.
February 6, 2025 at 6:16 AM
As its 2025, I guess its about time this thing finally got online. I had a dig through the big box of modems, and this one seems suitable enough! Fits right in between the NIC (a far more sensible connectivity option), and the Transteque MFM disk controller for the ST-225 20MB hard disk.
The Mitac Paragon 88, a rather nice compact 10MHz Turbo XT. Integrated Paradise CGA video, RTC, Floppy controller, one serial port, one parallel port and 768K RAM (the top 512K-640K is bank-switchable to support a 128K RAM disk). Display is an ADI DM-14+ green monochrome. HDD is a Seagate ST-225.
February 6, 2025 at 4:58 AM
The Mitac Paragon 88, a rather nice compact 10MHz Turbo XT. Integrated Paradise CGA video, RTC, Floppy controller, one serial port, one parallel port and 768K RAM (the top 512K-640K is bank-switchable to support a 128K RAM disk). Display is an ADI DM-14+ green monochrome. HDD is a Seagate ST-225.
The AlphaServer and RS/6000 eventually finished their task! The AlphaServer produced the Kermit 95 3.0 beta 7 DEC Alpha binaries for NT 3.50, NT 3.51/4.0/2000, and 64bit Windows 2000ish, while the RS/6000 did the PowerPC build for NT 4.0.
January 27, 2025 at 10:18 AM
The AlphaServer and RS/6000 eventually finished their task! The AlphaServer produced the Kermit 95 3.0 beta 7 DEC Alpha binaries for NT 3.50, NT 3.51/4.0/2000, and 64bit Windows 2000ish, while the RS/6000 did the PowerPC build for NT 4.0.
SSH port and X11 forwarding, a lightly updated user manual, various bug fixes and enhancements such as new commands to turn the menubar, toolbar and statusbar on/off. When the menubar is off, some important commands appear in the window menu (like PuTTY).
January 27, 2025 at 8:47 AM
SSH port and X11 forwarding, a lightly updated user manual, various bug fixes and enhancements such as new commands to turn the menubar, toolbar and statusbar on/off. When the menubar is off, some important commands appear in the window menu (like PuTTY).
And the RS/6000 is joining in today too
January 27, 2025 at 2:33 AM
And the RS/6000 is joining in today too
Today the Windows AlphaServer 800 is doing a bit of compiling...
January 27, 2025 at 2:33 AM
Today the Windows AlphaServer 800 is doing a bit of compiling...
Will be interesting to hear if there is anything to DCA1! I've got a DCA2 awaiting some kind of benchmarking; it requires special 15ns EDRAM SIMMs in the first two slots, with the others for regular uncached FPM stuff. The Ramtron EDRAM chips are apparently a 35ns DRAM combined with 15ns SRAM cache.
January 14, 2025 at 3:38 AM
Will be interesting to hear if there is anything to DCA1! I've got a DCA2 awaiting some kind of benchmarking; it requires special 15ns EDRAM SIMMs in the first two slots, with the others for regular uncached FPM stuff. The Ramtron EDRAM chips are apparently a 35ns DRAM combined with 15ns SRAM cache.
Playing Age of Empires under x86 emulation on an AlphaServer 800 via an IP-KVM isn't the *best* experience, but it could be much worse. It has trouble scrolling the screen (1024x768 probably doesn't help), but otherwise it runs pretty smoothly. Perhaps letting FX!32 optimise more may help.
December 22, 2024 at 10:50 AM
Playing Age of Empires under x86 emulation on an AlphaServer 800 via an IP-KVM isn't the *best* experience, but it could be much worse. It has trouble scrolling the screen (1024x768 probably doesn't help), but otherwise it runs pretty smoothly. Perhaps letting FX!32 optimise more may help.
About time I posted something, so last night I installed real 64bit Windows 2000ish on one of my DEC AlphaServer 800s, a model of computer introduced in 1997 with prices starting at around US$30k in 2023 money. The CPU is a 500MHz 64bit DEC Alpha EV56 which was introduced in 1996.
December 21, 2024 at 8:42 AM
About time I posted something, so last night I installed real 64bit Windows 2000ish on one of my DEC AlphaServer 800s, a model of computer introduced in 1997 with prices starting at around US$30k in 2023 money. The CPU is a 500MHz 64bit DEC Alpha EV56 which was introduced in 1996.
When you install Kermit 95 of course!
December 9, 2024 at 6:16 AM
When you install Kermit 95 of course!