<From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
<Intel MCS8i 8080 development system. Well, it was late in the day, my
<money was running out, so I could only buy one of them.
MCS8i, if it was 1972 it could only be 8008 powered as the 8080 was a few
years later. Actually the MCS handle was copyrighted with the 4004. The
8008 was late 1971 and the 8080 a bit over a year later.
<I picked the Intellec. And I am not sorry. Sure it's not going to make me
<rich, but it is _beautiful_ inside. It came with all the manuals
<(schematics and monitor source code), and contains the 8080 CPU board
<(copyright 1972, which must make it a pretty early 8080 design), a couple
<of 4K RAM boards, an EPROM board (1702's, of course) containing the
<monitor, an I/O card, and the programmer for the 1702. The backplane bus
<uses 100 pin 0.125" edge connectors, but the card has a differnt form
<factor (and pinout) to S100 cards
if it was the 100 pin cards (one connector it's the MCS) where the MDS was
multibus with the two backplane connectors. I believe your off on the date
by about two years as the 4004 was 70/71 and the 8008 was first of the
8bitters in late '71 and labeled the MCS-8 and the 8080 was the MCS-80 and
the 8085 followed using the MCS-85. My references are the SIM08/mcs-8 user
manual March 1973. I also I did design work with the 8008 chip in early
'73. The 8080 was not available yet but the intel rep was saying "soon".
It would be nearly 74 before soon arrived.
On the up side yes they were constructed like minis, that was the standard
of the time. Big rugged boxes that had to earn their keep. The MDS I have
is partially gutted as someone pulled the power supplies out but the rest is
intact and last I powered it it ran. FYI the CPU was not even branded in
mine it has some odd penciled ES19-1 on the cpu(8080). I even have the
correct Power One supplies to complete it( same vintage). In time they
could be worth more as they are scarce(low volume production).
<As regards historical interest, well, it has an IOBYTE at address 3,
<divided into 4 2-bit fields that define the console, punch, reader and
<list device - long before CP/M. And there's plenty more things like that.
The first incantation of CPM was on an MDS-800 box and the sources for a
typical bios in the cpm 1.4 and 2 manuals reflect that. IOBYTE is
supported, The docs say it's implemented using the intel standard.
Allison
I've got place to put it and no way to get it there. Maybe someone else
does?
In ba.market.computers, Graham Freeman <graham(a)step.mother.com> wrote:
> FREE - You pick up - VAX 11/750 monster computer. Three units -
>two the size of a full-size home refrigerator and another the size of an
>economy clothes washer. Call or e-mail if you're interested. Units are
>located in Davis, California.
>Graham Freeman graham(a)madre.com
>(530)753-0650 - voice (530)759-4184 - pager
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)crl.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
some guy i bought a mac video card from said he had something called an
apollo workstation. he said it was a 68020/68030 with a 19 inch monitor, can
run *nix, and would only want ~$50 for it. anyone heard of this machine or
know anything about it? he said some local colleges used the machines for
various duties but are obsolete now.
david
At 04:48 AM 11/1/97 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>On Fri, 31 Oct 1997, Bruce James wrote:
>
>> and my latest find a Amiga 1000 with 1080 moniter and 512k memory
>> anyone have more information on expansion of this computer??
>
>I used an Amiga 1000 as my primary computer for six years. Beautiful
>machine. The darling of my collection. :)
Hi thanks Doug for the reply
I am mostly looking for ways of adding more memory and a hard drive..
picked up a second 3 1/2 external drive and rs1200 modem.
I need a good terminal program and Word Processer..
Also can you give me a hint on what software will work like most stuff for
the a-500 or a-2000??
> I can pull out
>my old manuals and magazines and see what I can dig up. Hopefully I
>haven't made any errors above. :)
>
>Doug Spence
>ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
Again thanks Bruce James
kb8kac tech plus
ejames(a)newwave.net
Sure they would.... if the computer was better built then them, then it
would break their head. If it was built worse than them, their head would
only sustain minor damage!!!
----------
From: Kip Crosby <engine(a)chac.org>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Classic Computer Rescue Squad
Date: Saturday, November 08, 1997 3:18 AM
At 23:18 11/7/97 +0000, you wrote:
>I am conviced that a lot of people (probably not on this list) wouldn't
>know a well-designed or well-built computer if it was dropped on them...
Naturally not, they'd be too busy limping around howling.
____________________________________________________________
Kip Crosby, honcho, mechanic and sole proprietor, Kip's Garage
http://www.kipsgarage.com: rumors, tech tips and philosophy for the
trenches
Coming Spring '98: The Windows 98 Bible by Kip Crosby and Fred Davis!
Now.... just for fun, try to get a modern PC, drop it on your toe (A
sacrifice for science) and then watch it break into DOZENS of piece. Chip
out of socket, RAM out of socket, motherboard out of case, power supply out
of case, HDD crashed, disk drive not in a working condition, CD-ROM drive's
laser swears that there's no disk in. They don't make 'em like they used
to!!!
----------
From: Jeff Beoletto <jbeolett(a)ssi.net>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Classic Computer Rescue Squad
Date: Saturday, November 08, 1997 6:28 PM
On Sat, 8 Nov 1997, Daniel A. Seagraves wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Nov 1997, Hotze wrote:
>
> > At 23:18 11/7/97 +0000, you wrote:
> > >I am conviced that a lot of people (probably not on this list)
wouldn't
> > >know a well-designed or well-built computer if it was dropped on
them...
> >
> > Naturally not, they'd be too busy limping around howling.
> >
>
> I DID THAT! I DID THAT! I successfully managed to crush Jeff Beoletto's
> (One of my friends) toes with
> a PDP-11/44. We were trying to move it sideways. BTW, his foot healed
up
> quite well. And he wasn't limping around, he was curled up in a little
> ball on the floor, cussing a blue streak :) A week ago we were moving
the
> RA81, and I almost did it again...
>
>
>
Seeing how it was me that Dan managed to drop it I can agree to
the limping, and ironically enough it's the same foot that I had broken 3
times in the month before he crushed it. And just yesterday hauling a pc
down to our storagge office on the 5th floor I tripped and fell down the
steps and have just re-broken that very same ankle. Computers are
hazerdous to your health. =+)
In a message dated 97-11-01 22:50:14 EST, Zane Healy put forth:
> I had a good day scrounging the junk stores, first chance I've had in about
> two months to do any serious looking. Among the things I came up with
> today were an Atari 400 and a Atari 800. No Power Supply for either
> though, but then I'm used to that problem. The question is, what on earth
> does it use for a PS? Can I just break out the old Atari 2600 and use
it's
> PS?
on my ps for my atari 400 it says the output is 9v ac but im not sure if the
plug is center positive or not. anyone have tapes for the 400? i have the
"program recorder" but nothing to use in it.
david
<> IE: altair was importnat because it was relatively cheap.
<
<And it spawned a bus architecture that begat the micro-computer
<revolution.
There is something to that but on closer inspection the SWTP, SouthWest
Technical Products SS50 bus was far cheaper and much easier to interface
to. The 100 pin connector was expensive and the redundant signals were/are
a pain. It would take several years to sort out things like bus noise and
compatability. No S100 was a bandwagon and the technology was not at issue
as there were better busses and even at the current time of the altair.
When IMSAI also did it nearly the same people sayw that as important enough
that there were two systems with a similar bus that wasn't too bad to
connect to. Now that is historically significant. When two companies
compete using similar hardware or software that is when it takes
significance as it just became an industry.
As to spawning a revolution, no. That started when the machines became
small enough and cheap enough to be attainable. I still remember in 1970
hanging out in highschool with the guys debating processor wordlength and
actually developing on paper a possible sequencer for one. I could have
had a CIM2000 in '72 (bout the size and performance of an 8e) for $2000!
That was the price of a new ford pickup then! It was there I was in it.
What it did was give us early computer hackers and engineers something
useful without some of the teething cycles of homebrewery. It was also
the industry cranking out components that had potential at attainable
prices. I built my first logic design using a RAM (1101, 256x1) in late
'71 and it was at $23 each. In a year the 2102 (1kx1) would be $16.
Imagine a 1kx8 memory for $128!!! By 1974 that would be 4kx8 for under
$100. This along with TTL prices dropping to pennies for a 7400 gate
made assembling a pdp-8 or somesuch within reach, then the 8008 chip at
$180 (over a weeks take home pay in 1972) made it come a bit closer. A
year before the DEC 1974 Popular Electronics Altair article were the Radio
Electronics articles for the Mark-8 a 8008 machine. So it wasn't a single
event is as much the cumulations of many small events. We would get out
of the basement/garage and started on the next level. Better said we
stopped trying to build a machine and started doing things with it. It
was an accelerator.
There were many of accelerators. There would be many more, the z80 would
be the next one. I also think the 16bit battles that started soon after
would push the envelope some more, as did the 32bit systems. In the middle
of the 8/16 battle graphics started to be seen and that pushed the CPUs
harder and demanded more memory and left a huge vacuum for software.
Allison
<Ehehe... We should build a computer from discrete components, just to
<operate one. And connect it to the Internet. Of course, we'd never
<finish in out lifetimes, and it would fill a room, but it would be awful
<cool!
It's been done and it didn't take lifetime or fill rooms. The machines
were called LINC and they were built in 1964 time frame. Granted the
internet part would take a bit longer.
Over the years many home made machine not microprocessor based have been
built. It is an undertaking but it's not anywhere near impossible.
In reality using moden methods and current discrete parts a better and
smaller machine could be built.
Allison
NS if this is true or not, but it's funny!
The system programmer group writing TOPS-10 use to love fancy
TECO programs and had a weekly contest for them. One guru
working on FORTRAN compilers would read them carefully but never
enter one. They thought he was just concentrating on compilers.
Then one week he submitted a macro that did FORTRAN compilation,
complete with optimization. The TECO program took days to run,
but it worked. Apparently he had written a PDP-10 instruction
set eumlator in TECO and fed the compiler into it!
