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Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 8: it boots

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Re: Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 8: it boots

#42

Post by eric_the_read »

kens wrote: post #40
eric_the_read wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a 16500? If so, you might see if you can scrounge up a 16505A, which might be able to network much faster (plus, it supports VNC and has a nice (for the time) graphical display. The 16505A is basically a PA-RISC pizza box that hooks up to the 16500 via a SCSI cable on the back, and adds some X11/Motif GUI happiness on top. I took a quick look around eBay and saw one for ~$275, but you might be able to get one c…

The logic analyzer is a 1670G; Marc collects vintage HP equipment, although technically this is Agilent.

Eh, 1999 was right when the split happened, so regardless of the label, it was still basically an HP product at the time. Still, that doesn't help you much; the 16505A only worked with the 16500 series analyzer. There was a 16700, IIRC, that was basically an 16500C with an integrated 16505A, but that doesn't help you much.

Re: Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 8: it boots

#44

Post by 0x0 »

kens wrote: post #38
0x0 wrote: post #30

I'm trying to read the article on an iphone but every time I zoom out to see the full width article I get bounced over to an article about toothbrushes?! For the better part of a minute I was wondering if they had monkey-patched the disk controller with an electronic toothbrush?!

You must have swiped left to my earlier article where I did a teardown of a Sonicare toothbrush. I've removed Blogger's swipe left/right navigation, which I think is more distracting than useful, and I've re-enabled pinch to zoom, so hopefully the navigation will work better for you now. Also note that you can tap on a photo to get a high-resolution version (better than zooming will give you).

Thanks, it works great now.

I put two fingers down on the screen and then started dragging the fingers in opposite directions. I guess whatever javascript was enabled only looked at one of the touches (a zoom gesture is basically two opposite-moving swipe gestures, so...) :)

Re: Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 8: it boots

#45

Post by [deleted] »

kens wrote: post #40
eric_the_read wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a 16500? If so, you might see if you can scrounge up a 16505A, which might be able to network much faster (plus, it supports VNC and has a nice (for the time) graphical display. The 16505A is basically a PA-RISC pizza box that hooks up to the 16500 via a SCSI cable on the back, and adds some X11/Motif GUI happiness on top. I took a quick look around eBay and saw one for ~$275, but you might be able to get one c…

The logic analyzer is a 1670G; Marc collects vintage HP equipment, although technically this is Agilent.

[deleted]

Re: Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 8: it boots

#46

Post by eric_the_read »

kens wrote: post #40
eric_the_read wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a 16500? If so, you might see if you can scrounge up a 16505A, which might be able to network much faster (plus, it supports VNC and has a nice (for the time) graphical display. The 16505A is basically a PA-RISC pizza box that hooks up to the 16500 via a SCSI cable on the back, and adds some X11/Motif GUI happiness on top. I took a quick look around eBay and saw one for ~$275, but you might be able to get one c…

The logic analyzer is a 1670G; Marc collects vintage HP equipment, although technically this is Agilent.

You might try mounting it via NFS; it's also quite possible that the serial port might be faster for getting traces off the box than its relatively anemic ethernet support.

Re: Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 8: it boots

#47

Post by kens »

thought_alarm wrote: post #43

Really neat. I can't wait to see the video! The pictures of screen look unusual, as if every second scan line is missing. Is the Alto outputting an interlaced video signal? That would be very interesting and unexpected.

Yes, the Alto's video is interlaced. I took the photos with my phone (which used 1/60 second speed), which would explain why scan lines are missing. I'll use a real camera next time and see if that helps.

Re: Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 8: it boots

#48

Post by kens »

julian_1 wrote: post #36

Is this the only Alto running today?

There are a bunch of running Altos, so we're not exactly in uncharted territory. Fortunately people with Alto experience are willing to help out, for example Al Kossow giving us a disk interface card when we found ours was the wrong type. The Living Computer Museum is probably the best bet if you want to see one in operation.

Re: Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 8: it boots

#49

Post by kens »

eric_the_read wrote: post #46
kens wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic analyzer is a 1670G; Marc collects vintage HP equipment, although technically this is Agilent.

You might try mounting it via NFS; it's also quite possible that the serial port might be faster for getting traces off the box than its relatively anemic ethernet support.

The serial port is also slow as molasses. If we want a full download, Marc will run it over the serial port overnight. We haven't tried NFS.
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