--- Matthew Sell <msell_at_ontimesupport.com> wrote:
>
>
> Of course, the wiring in my house sucks. The electricians put an average
> of three rooms on a 15 amp branch.
That's typical around here for the houses I've lived in (pre-WW-I,
typically, some with active knob-and-tube wiring).
I haven't lived in a place with a 60A feed (there are plenty), but
the most I have ever had is 100A.
> Yea - no kidding. Try playing Robotron on a PC.... Or Star Wars (using
> keyboard)
Not playable. I'm a whiz at the real Star Wars. I'm OK with the
version that came out for the Amiga (uses the mouse for targetting).
MAME/keyboard Star Wars is awful.
I've seen instructions for how to make a facimile Star Wars controller
out of PVC pipe and a few other goodies. Looks interesting but time
consuming. I missed the chance to buy a (broken) sit-down Star Wars
cabinet at the same time I bought my (broken) Gorf cabinet, but the
operator wouldn't name a price (and shortly thereafter, his warehouse
was levelled and is now a grassy field next to Chemical Abstracts,
as a reference point for the locals on this list).
If I run across a broken Star Wars, I'd rather fix it than make a
controller from scratch. More payback for the same investment of time.
> Both devices (VAX and arcade game) are about the same vintage, and use
> similar components - for the most part.
Indeed. I stripped some AMD 2901s from a dead 11/730 board for a buddy
to fix the math co-processor for his Battlezone. It has one or two 6502s
for the main functions and sound, and a bolt-on 16-bit bit-slice vector
engine. Apparently they are one of the first things to check if a
particular diagnostic code appears. Fixed him right up. I have a stack
of 11/730 CPU boards purchased over the 1988-1990 timeframe - it was
frequently cheaper to keep our 11/730s running by purchasing entire CPUs
than it was to buy a single board from a repair depot like ESS. DEC
Field Service contracts were out of sight for deprecated hardware.
I still have the 11/730 in storage. It's a nice old box if you can
stand .4 VUPs, 5MB of RAM and 120MB of internal storage. Rather play
with an 11/750, though.
-ethan
__________________________________________________
Yahoo! - We Remember
9-11: A tribute to the more than 3,000 lives lost
http://dir.remember.yahoo.com/tribute
Received on Tue Sep 10 2002 - 11:36:00 BST