The more I look into this, the more that an 8mhz XT-class machine with a 10 megabit Lan connection may not be able to toss mail at a rate to keep up with the near non-stop BinkD traffic that happens here.

This system has close to a hundred links and the BinkD subsystem is *busy* almost non-stop sending and receiving mail. Okay, fine, that runs on Windows and I serve up an NFS/SMB share or do something to move mail between this and the white beast. But still... its going to get "convoluted" if I do this.

The other problem is that D'Bridge is VERY disk-intensive and theres nothing I can do about that. Nobody notices this on Windows and OS/2 or modern OS's
or anything when theres file caching. So by the time I load network drivers, a TCP stack, a small disk-cache, there is either not enough base RAM to run anything.

Adding a LIM EMS board will help "somewhat" but I cannot load drivers into upper memory. Despite this Tandy being a 286, there are no UMB blocks or A20 control line so lets forget about loading any device drivers "high".

I *could* upgrade that Tandy from 640k to 768k because it does not use VGA but rather its own CGA-clone, TGA graphics. The screen memory sits just above that region and is cached into a 16k segment in base RAM. But the problem is... I don't have a composite/RGB CGA monitor.

Its interesting because the moment I add an 8-bit ISA VGA card, the VGA BIOS sits at $C800 which renders that 128k memory upgrade a moot-point.

This model can only accept either the familiar MFM/RLL hard drive & card (or a hard card), or I spend close to $200 for an XT-IDE hard drive... yes, XT-IDE because at the time that Tandy was manufactured in '88 there was no clear-cut decision by the industry to go with the current ATA-IDE standard. The
firmware on AT hard drives will not report the geometry correctly to XT-IDE.

Not 100% ruling it out this project... but its becoming grim...

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (1:229/426)

Hello Nick!

Friday March 11 2022 18:19, you wrote to All:

A cheaper option (may be), I have purchased at not great expense a Raspberry Pi4B 8 GB (ok, thats a lot more than say 4Gb), Argon One M.2 box, PSU and a WD 240Gb M.2 SSD that mount in the case. It is not a M.2 NVME so writes are only about 500Mb/s around the speed of a HDD and reading is not much better but the
whole lot come in at 120 pounds (a 4Gb is 30 cheaper).

This is currently sitting on top of a Pi3B+ with a HDD in a Geekwork metal case.

The idea is to install a basic BBS based on mbse and set it up with the wimpy nodeaddress I have for elist 2:25/21, set up 1 network echo, plus ELIST and ECHOLIST and do all elist processing on that which will pass files/echo across to my main system.
Once that all works do the same on the 3B+ which I am hoping will copy with
the low traffic which I will make available to my elist successor for the cost of P&P and say 50 pounds / $60 so when I am no longer around my wife can pass on a working system that only requires plugging in to a power point with a
twin cabled 8 (sideways) plug, make any minor changes within mbse for a change of node number and up/down link and job done.

The system does not even need a keyboard, mouse and monitor/TV (via HTMI) as it
can be accessed using ssh or telnet etc for the purpose of running the elist s/w.

Now the point, running say Linux with the wine or dosbox interface tools it can
run Dbridge directly to a router or hub etc.

Do not think it can handle 40 links but at least say 20+ but not doing every thing as crash traffic. My 8-core some times struggles if a lot of in/out is occuring on my 20Mb up broadband (down is 210Mb) but reducing the number of connections at any one time actually speeds things up. IF I get rid of the web and ftp servers or at least one of them - even better.

Most of this a Pi can handle although the 4B has more oomf.

Just a idea - may be :)

The more I look into this, the more that an 8mhz XT-class machine with
a 10 megabit Lan connection may not be able to toss mail at a rate to
keep up with the near non-stop BinkD traffic that happens here.

This system has close to a hundred links and the BinkD subsystem is
*busy* almost non-stop sending and receiving mail. Okay, fine, that
runs on Windows and I serve up an NFS/SMB share or do something to
move mail between this and the white beast. But still... its going to
get "convoluted" if I do this.

The other problem is that D'Bridge is VERY disk-intensive and theres
nothing I can do about that. Nobody notices this on Windows and OS/2
or modern OS's or anything when theres file caching. So by the time I
load network drivers, a TCP stack, a small disk-cache, there is either
not enough base RAM to run anything.

Adding a LIM EMS board will help "somewhat" but I cannot load drivers
into upper memory. Despite this Tandy being a 286, there are no UMB
blocks or A20 control line so lets forget about loading any device
drivers "high".

I *could* upgrade that Tandy from 640k to 768k because it does not use
VGA but rather its own CGA-clone, TGA graphics. The screen memory sits
just above that region and is cached into a 16k segment in base RAM.
But the problem is... I don't have a composite/RGB CGA monitor.

Its interesting because the moment I add an 8-bit ISA VGA card, the
VGA BIOS sits at $C800 which renders that 128k memory upgrade a
moot-point.

This model can only accept either the familiar MFM/RLL hard drive &
card (or a hard card), or I spend close to $200 for an XT-IDE hard
drive... yes, XT-IDE because at the time that Tandy was manufactured
in '88 there was no clear-cut decision by the industry to go with the current ATA-IDE standard. The firmware on AT hard drives will not
report the geometry correctly to XT-IDE.

Not 100% ruling it out this project... but its becoming grim...

Nick

Vincent

--- Mageia Linux v8 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.24/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Air Applewood, The Linux Gateway to the UK & Eire (2:250/1)

On 12 Mar 22 00:58:06, Vincent Coen said the following to Nick Andre:

A cheaper option (may be), I have purchased at not great expense a Raspberr Pi4B 8 GB (ok, thats a lot more than say 4Gb), Argon One M.2 box, PSU and a 240Gb M.2 SSD that mount in the case. It is not a M.2 NVME so writes are on about 500Mb/s around the speed of a HDD and reading is not much better but

Thanks for the feedback.

The current Windows environment here does everything perfectly. Not looking to change any of that... now.

The idea with this whole project is to see if a Tandy from 1988 can handle the workload of running an entire Fido operation in 2022.

Its the challenge of making something old do something today that would "seem" impossible. The only impossible I can see so far is the memory, networking and speed of manipulating packets and messages.

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (1:229/426)

Hello Nick!

Friday March 11 2022 20:22, you wrote to me:

On 12 Mar 22 00:58:06, Vincent Coen said the following to Nick Andre:

A cheaper option (may be), I have purchased at not great expense a
Raspberr Pi4B 8 GB (ok, thats a lot more than say 4Gb), Argon One
M.2 box, PSU and a 240Gb M.2 SSD that mount in the case. It is not
a M.2 NVME so writes are on about 500Mb/s around the speed of a
HDD and reading is not much better but

Thanks for the feedback.

The current Windows environment here does everything perfectly. Not
looking to change any of that... now.

The idea with this whole project is to see if a Tandy from 1988 can
handle the workload of running an entire Fido operation in 2022.

Its the challenge of making something old do something today that
would "seem" impossible. The only impossible I can see so far is the
memory, networking and speed of manipulating packets and messages.

When I first got seriously in as a sysop but only using my own kit (as against a Cromemco runing Cromix) it was a 386 type and althought that handled what was
required it was slow in processing file and echos (tic and tossing) with a small number of up and downlinks, i.e., < 10.

There is no way on earth it could have handled 30+ and sent out crash etc mostly Ram, CPU and HDD I/O speeds etc and that on the later box was running OS/2. Ram was always an issue as processes were always being swapped out and it was happening often enough that it was a major bottle neck.

Your Tandy is considerably older so unless you restrict what it does you will suffer the same problems very soon if not immediately and don't forget that if you have a HDD on it it will be using the old technology i.e., pre-IDE if memory serves and they are very slow assuming you can find any.

I sold of for peanuts all my old drives around 2010 many of which were 5 inch heavy drives including the older IBM style interfaces - all working but totally
out of date and useless for my then current kit which was changed to Sata from SCSI - and that was level 3 along with SSA's (or was it SAS's ?).

If you look at the speeds (CPU, Bus, I/O etc, for your Tandy you will realise that it is a nice idea but will not float.

Good luck any way just finding the right extra hardware to help it !
Might be fun just trying to find 5" NEW floppies for it assuming the drives are
in working shape :)

Doing a google on it I found :

Operating systems and environments

Tandy shipped PCs with their own customized version of MS-DOS, which are compatible with Tandy graphics and keyboard. The most current version of MS-DOS
for Tandy 1000 is DOS 3.22. Tandy 1000s came shipped with one of several varieties of Deskmate, their own GUI productivity software suite.

There may be compatibility issues with later versions of DOS such as DOS 5 and DOS 6. Until the 1000 RLX, Tandy 1000s were typically limited to 640 KB main memory, and non-Tandy versions of DOS often reduce the memory available for applications and games. In addition, the hardware detection routine for the installer of Microsoft MS-DOS 6 could corrupt the serial EEPROM of Tandy 1000 HX machines.[22]

Tandy 1000s could work with Windows 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 but not 3.1, with the exception of the RLX which could run Windows 3.1 in Standard mode,[23] and the RSX which fully supported running Windows 3.1 in 386 Enhanced mode.

To add insult to injury :

Expansion slots

With the exception of the 1000 EX and HX, Tandy used industry standard 8-bit XT
ISA slots in their desktop models, including the SX, TX, SL, and TL series, but
the actual length was limited to 10.5 inches or shorter, rather than the industry standard XT length of 13 inches. While many 8-bit cards met this length requirement, some cards such as hard cards, EMS memory cards, and multifunction cards that required the standard 13" length did not fit in the 1000's case. The EX and HX utilized a PLUS-style connector, which was electronically identical to an 8-bit XT ISA slot, but had a 62-pin Berg connector instead of a card edge, rendering it incompatible with ISA cards without an adapter. The PLUS connector was designed for compactness in these models with built-in keyboards. The 1000 RSX featured two 16-bit AT ISA slots. Hard disk drives

As hard disk drives at the time of the Tandy 1000's introduction were very expensive, Tandy 1000 systems were not usually equipped with hard drives. However, it was possible to add a hard drive to most Tandy 1000 computers. Most
of the desktop-type Tandy 1000 units could accept regular 8-bit ISA bus MFM, RLL and SCSI controllers like typical XT-class machines; however, care had to be taken when configuring the cards so that they did not cause conflicts with the on-board Tandy-designed peripherals.

For most Tandy 1000 models (other than the compact EX and HX) that did not come
already equipped with a hard drive, Tandy offered hard disk options in the form
of hardcards that were installed in one of the computer's expansion slots and consisted of a controller and drive (typically a 3.5-inch MFM or RLL unit with a Western Digital controller) mounted together on a metal bracket. Their own 20
MB hard card was offered for $799, though compatible third-party units were available. Although this arrangement provided a neat physical coupling between the controller and the disk, single-sector internal transfers and dependence on
the speed of the host machine to transfer data to memory meant that a trial-and-error approach was still needed to set the disk interleave correctly to ensure optimum transfer rates. Furthermore, as the Tandy 1000's slots were only 10.5" long and are 8-bit only, some units would not fit and/or operate correctly unless they were certified to be Tandy-compatible.

Starting with the Tandy 1000 TL/2, XT IDE controllers were integrated onto the motherboard. However, these were incompatible with common AT IDE hard drives. The TL/2, TL/3, RL and RLX all used the XT IDE interface, where the later (and significantly upgraded) RSX was the only Tandy 1000 model computer to use a standard AT IDE interface. One option for modern users of these systems is to install and use XT ISA CompactFlash adapter; this is also the most practical way to install a hard drive into a Tandy 1000 EX or HX, using an adapter cable that adapts the male PLUS-style connector to an 8-bit ISA card-edge slot.

When I was selling systems in the mid 70's I did take a look at Tandy offerings
but the competition (and there was a lot - all non IBM ) was so much better all
round that it was not given a second look even if the pricing was good which it
was not.

Vincent

--- Mageia Linux v8 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.24/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Air Applewood, The Linux Gateway to the UK & Eire (2:250/1)

Nick Andre wrote to Vincent Coen <=-

Its the challenge of making something old do something today that would "seem" impossible. The only impossible I can see so far is the memory, networking and speed of manipulating packets and messages.

I'd say there's certain factors you can't "fudge" on in a scenario like
that. You have a very busy system and the Tandy probably couldn't handle
that at all. The fact that you have a working Tandy 1000 is a miracle in
and of itself.

-- Sean

... My other computer is a Timex/Sinclair 1000.
--- MultiMail/Linux
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (1:18/200)

Nick Andre wrote to All <=-

The more I look into this, the more that an 8mhz XT-class machine with
a 10 megabit Lan connection may not be able to toss mail at a rate to
keep up with the near non-stop BinkD traffic that happens here.

Would a tosser be able to use a co-processor? I wonder if decompression routines would be math-intensive enough to merit it.

If you could find an NEC V20 chip to replace the 8088, they do run a bit faster. Back then, every little bit helped.

The clock chip is probably a soldered-on quartz crystal. 10mhz XT, anyone?


... Where is the edge?
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org | tomorrow's retro tech (1:218/700)

On 13 Mar 22 10:41:00, Kurt Weiske said the following to Nick Andre:

Would a tosser be able to use a co-processor? I wonder if decompression routines would be math-intensive enough to merit it.

A co-processor is for floating-point operation, and theres none of that in
the D'Bridge code or unzipping compressed stuff (that I can see anyway).

Oddly enough, Tradewars requires a math co-processor... I didn't know Sheldon Cooper math is used to move your spaceship from a choice of only 5000 sectors.

If you could find an NEC V20 chip to replace the 8088, they do run a bit faster. Back then, every little bit helped.

The clock chip is probably a soldered-on quartz crystal. 10mhz XT, anyone?

I'm not sure but this is a 286-based Tandy... but still XT-class.

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (1:229/426)