Subject: Past News

From: [email-masked] (Kevin Murrell)
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 10:02:02 +0000

Recently someone posted a note with the ftp address of all the past
news in this group.   Can anyone re-post for me?

Have PDP8 Mk 1 and PROUD of it!

-- 
Kevin Murrell

---

From: [email-masked] (Charles Lasner)
Date: 5 Mar 1994 14:56:59 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>Have PDP8 Mk 1 and PROUD of it!

           ^^^^

What exactly is a "Mk 1"?  (or do you just mean an original -8?  There
are others with them!)

There are now several -8 archives of sorts.  I am the librarian for the
one on sunsite.unc.edu in the directory:

/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-8

and lower directories, etc.  Within there is ....../pdp-8/usenet/alt.sys.pdp8
which has the archives of alt.sys.pdp8 from inception through last month.

I also understand that through defective propagation there is at least
one "splinter" of a.s.p carried only in au.  I would appreciate someone
sending me that feed so I can add in the au-only articles where
appropriate, etc. (All Ozzies please step forward!)

Does anyone know the current status of Eric Smith, (former?) maintainer
of a similar archive on ftp.telebit.com?

There is also an archive maintained by Johnny Billquist and a more recent
one started up by Jeff Russ.  To my knowledge, mine is the only one
archiving the newsgroup.

More recently, I have started on a longer-term project which is to
archive the pdp8-lover's mailing list, which many of our subscribers are
on also.  So far, I am "all the way up" to May, 1989!  I am sorting
through several independent sets of hand-maintained archives.  In all
probability, just about all of the articles will be available assuming
that the "gaps" in each set don't overlap, etc.  If anyone wants to
contribute any of this material they have been privately maintaining,
please e-mail me as [email-masked] on this topic.  The archive
will be storing both a.s.p and the lover's list in files by months.  For
example, 8904.lov is the pdp8-lovers list for April, 1989.  The most
recent a.s.p file is 9402.asp which is the archive for alt.sys.pdp8 for
February, 1994.

Please e-mail me if you have any pdp-8 or DECmate relevant stuff.  The
archive will accept any useful material.  This includes disk/disk-images,
graphics/picture files, binary paper-tape files, source files, operating
systems, etc.  Various people have appropriate media conversion
facilities, so don't worry if you believe you have stuff on media you
can't currently read; chances are someone else can read it and get it back
to you on something else you can deal with, etc.

Towards the previous end, I need some help myself!  Does anyone know
anything about PDP-11/TC-11 DECtapes used on PDP-11 unix systems?
Alledgedly, these tapes were maintained by a facility named "tp" some
moons ago.  If I had to guess, I would say that "tp" borrows some ideas
from "tar" and some from the RT-11 style of tape layout.

I can physically read the tapes, as they are of course PDP-6/10/7/9/15/11
standard physical format.  But I need next-level structure info on block
layout, etc. in order to retrieve some source files for someone who would
be overjoyed if we can do it!  (If anyone is running unix on an -11 and
can directly handle this, I can send a copy of the DECtapes (2 of them in
all) to them real easily as they can be trivially copied on the -8 with
TC08 using DTCOPY.)

cjl

---

From: [email-masked] (Stephen Quigg)
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 1994 22:50:07 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,

>appropriate, etc. (All Ozzies please step forward!)

The problem was stuff not getting into or out of Oz, although stuff that
was cross-posted found it's way back into a.s.p. This problem went away as
of Dec '93; notice that this is an a.s.p only post, and it comes from Oz.

cheers,
Steve "is it my '8 collection growing or my garage shrinking" Quigg.

P.S. The rumor that DECtapes run the other way in the Southern Hemisphere are
largely untrue!!

---

From: [email-masked] (Charles Lasner)
Date: 8 Mar 1994 19:30:13 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>of Dec '93; notice that this is an a.s.p only post, and it comes from Oz.

Yes, but a.s.p started in Sep '92.  I would like to include anything
worth archiving in the main collection.  I was led to believe that there
indeed was some useful stuff, and that it only ever got out on "the
backs" of posts to other groups, such as alt.folklore.computers, etc.
Thus, there may be some "internal" stuff that should be taken in, etc.

BTW, do OZ'er's have ftp access to sunsite.unc.edu?

There is an incoming directory for stuff such as this, etc.

>Steve "is it my '8 collection growing or my garage shrinking" Quigg.

Or both?

>P.S. The rumor that DECtapes run the other way in the Southern Hemisphere are

No, those are LINCtapes!

(Not known as the "LAP-6 Coriollis" effect!)

cjl