That's the ill-fated 88000 chipset by Motorola. It was Moto's
only entry into the then-new RISC processor market. The AViiON
is one of a handfull of machines developed to use the 88000.
The three chips collectively make up a CPU: the two 88200's
are cache/mmu, and the 88100 is the actual CPU itself.
The 88000 was way cool, on account of it was one of the earliest
RISC CPU's that was designed specifically to operate in parallel.
This processor family was doomed when Moto sold it's soul to
IBM and Apple and produced the PowerPC (it did this, but only
after Moto shot itself in the foot, yet again).
Anyways, the AViiON ran DG-UX, (a unix subspecies), and were
fairly cool in their day. They can be had *very* cheaply;
I seriously doubt many will survive. . .
While not yet 10 years old, I think it qualifies as 'classic'
(well, they're cheap enough so I can afford to purchase them;
that's good enough for me!!!) :^)
Jeff
On Fri, 21 Apr 2000 22:45:15 -0500 Joe <rigdonj(a)intellistar.net> writes:
> Mike and I went to one place today and found the remains of a Data
> General
> Aiivion (sp?) in the scrap metal pile. We had gotten there too late
> to
> save it. :-( I did get the CPU module out of it. It has three large
> ICs on
> it. Two are XC88200RC25B s and the other is a MC88100RC25. Can
> anyone tell
> me what exactly these are?
>
>
> Joe
>
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>Perhaps you're thinking of the 8096. The i960 has no architectural or
Thats the beastie.
>The 8089 was not particularly intended for embedded applications; it was
>supposed to be a channel controller, i.e., a smart DMA controller able
I know it well. I have a few of them. Actually it does make a fair embeeded
controller if your not doing much math.
>The only thing 20-bit about the 8089 is the address, but at least it was
>a flat 20-bit space unlike that of the 8086.
And the alu was 20 bits wide too. The GA, GB and GC register beiseds
holding address information also were usable as accumulators. Simple part
to program
save for the lack of tools. I tried it for a channel controller for s100.
Parts overhead to use it was on the high side do the the bus state encoding.
Allison
VCF 1.0e is about a week away and plans are rolling right along. It
should prove to be a smashing event. My German lessons are
progressing nicely and I can now ask for beer in German and get
directions to the nearest toilet. Next week I hope to be able to apologize
in German for vomiting on your shoes.
In case this isn't making sense to you, I made a deal with Hans that if he
did the VCF for Europe I would learn German and give a 45 minute talk in
German. My talk will deal with the Inca Quipu, a mnemonic device made
of cloth that the ancient Inca's used to record things such as their crop
counts, population, etc.
I'm also giving a talk at Oxford (that would be in England :) at the
Institute of Archaeology, 36 Beaumont St, Oxford at 5pm on Thursday,
May 4th. My talk will deal with this whole computer collecting craze and
what people like us are doing to preserve the history of computing. I may
also give a follow-up talk the next day (that would be Friday, May 5th) at
the Computer Centre on Banbury Road. That talk is still tentative but I'll
post a follow-up when the time is worked out.
I'll be in Oxford from Thursday, May 4th, until Saturday morning, May
6th. I would love to meet any Englanders from the list so if you can
make it to the talk I'd be delighted. We can go get one of those big, tall
beers at a local pub afterwards. They're called a yard right? Shouldn't
that be 0.9144 meters now since you're on the metric system? At any
rate, we'll quaff some alcoholic beverages and then go harass pretty
young ladies.
If anyone would like to contact me about anything please send all
queries to sellam(a)vintage.org. I look forward to meeting many of my
European counterparts!
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
VCF Europe: April 29th & 30th, Munich, Germany
VCF Los Angeles: Summer 2000 (*TENTATIVE*)
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
I had a great time trekking all over north and central Florida today with Joe and we both found alot of new toys. I think I mentioned seeing a Univac 1540 here on the list a while back and today (soon) before it is to fall into the metal shredder of oblivion, I *liberated* his front panels!
Check out:
http://users.leading.net/~dogas/classiccmp/univac/univac.htm
There are several bends in the metal and I'm considering taking them to a car body shop to see if it can be straightened out unless anyone has a better idea...
A happy and tired...
- Mike: dogas(a)leading.net
>>>>> Forwarded message from Don Maslin <donm(a)cts.com>
On Fri, 21 Apr 2000, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Apr 2000, Don Maslin wrote:
> > > what the CP/M-86 would see on the MS-DOS format.
> > It gives you a big fat error message.
>
> In THIS case, due to sector size differences. But not ALWAYS. I have
> seen non-CP/M disks with E5 where a CP/M directory would have been.
I don't recall running across that, but I'll be alert now.
> MS-DOS will give a big FAT :-) error message when trying to read CP/M
> (actually "Probable Non-DOS disk") because it is picky about what it
> expects to see in the F.A.T.
Agreed.
> Due to reserved tracks, on 8" double density, CP/M's DIRectory will
> fall AFTER the end of the MS-DOS directory, where the first file would
> otherwise be likely to be. You're right that that would almost certainly
> be content that would choke CP/M. But with very short files and large
> clusters, and with sector interleave, it is entirely possible to have CP/M
> looking at unused sectors.
Possible, but...
> Both MS-DOS and CP/M will accept and assume "empty" when encountering
> a DIRectory (not the MS-DOS F.A.T.) sector of all E5. MOST MS-DOS formats
> fill the empty directory sectors with 00, but not all. Some use E5, some
> F6 with E5 every 32 bytes, ... What would CP/M-86 report for a directory
Rather like a CP/M directory that had its files deleted :)
> sector of all 00? An MS-DOS format with a large directory could easily
> leave the END of the MS-DOS directory sectors where the first of the CP/M
> directory sectors would be.
Agreed. I'll have to try the 00 bit and see what does actually
happen. I'll let you know.
> I don't often see use of USER in CP/M disks. Sometimes, but not often. I
> think that it is more likely that they gave Sellam blank formatted
> diskettes.
I wouldn't argue that. On the other hand, it would be prudent to check.
If he would mail one or more of the disks to me, I could examine them
and probably provide an answer.
- don
<< End forwarded message
On April 21, healyzh(a)aracnet.com wrote:
> > Ok, can someone explain why flip-chips keep selling for serious cash on
> > Ebay? I thought one thing people liked about flip-chips was how easy
> > they are to repair, ie, they are typicaly either transistor/resistor/diode
> > circuits, or possibly even simpler circuits implemented with very basic
> > IC's...
>
> My guess is that unless they're someone on this list they're being used as
> ornaments :^( I picked up a couple lots about a year ago when they were
> going for less than they do now. What's disgusting is seeing a single
> flip-chip that's fairly common goign for big bucks.
I think "common" is a matter of geography. Now, flip chips are much
easier to ship than big BA11 chassis, but...I've been looking for a
simple, run-of-the-mill pdp11/34a system around here (Maryland, DC
area) for the better part of two years...no dice...and many people
say the 11/34 is one of the most common DEC machines around.
I think some sort of central "clearing house" might help...we all
have projects involving machines that need one component or another.
Many of us will ask our local friends, then post to lists like this
one, etc., and often the results are good...but sometimes not.
I'm just thinking aloud here; this is a half-baked idea...maybe some
sort of web server with long-term lists of stuff we all have available
on the trading block, and maybe wish lists as well. Something to
facilitate better communications amongst folks like us that don't
necessarily know each other. Any thoughts?
-Dave McGuire
> Does CP/M-86 have a direct call to read a sector like
>CP/M-2.2 does? If so, it wouldn't take much code
>to make a sector viewer.
>Dwight
The jump table for the first 17 bios calls or so are as identical as
you can ask for considering some of the CPU differences.
The key ones are:
seldisk
settrack
setsector
setdma
read
write
Allison
The BIIN Computer was not a workstation. It was a fault tolerant transaction
processing machine of the late 1980s. It was to compete against Tandon and
IBM. The plans were to build 100 machines and put them out for trial and then
ramp up for production.
It used a variant of the i860 with multiple processors and 64 or 128 Megs of
ram, a 300 Meg HD for SW and mirrored IPI drives for data. Nice computer with
the entire chassis made to very high German standards in Germany and
airfreighted to here (Portland, OR).
Unfortunately we had a contract to dismantle and destroy all the machines
returned to intel after they closed down. Intel pulled all of the processor
chips before they even got to us. A very interesting machine, the chassis
took four hours to strip by our most experienced person.
For intel, Siemens was impossible to deal with, talk about a culture clash.
They were happy to see the project end. Intel had 5 or 10% with Siemens the
rest. When it became apparent that it was going to cost a huge amount of
money to compete, the BIIN Company was offered for sale and then shut down
and liquidated.
I have the original nail board for the BIIN Processor Card with all of it's
original documentation. If anyone out there is interested please contact me
off line at whoagiii(a)aol.com. I got the nail bed in another sale that was not
covered under the contract.
Paxton
I will also be inflicting myself on VCFE; I will be arriving in
Munchen Thurs morning and returning Monday; it will be a Big Fun to
meet anyone from the List who will be there.
Cheers
John
PS: a 'picture' of me is on the VCF 3.0 website... I exhibited the
Heathkit Large Analogue Computer, and was unfortunately too close to
it when Sellam took the photo. :( So you can figure out who I
am without having to decode eine NamenTag.
Ok, can someone explain why flip-chips keep selling for serious cash on
Ebay? I thought one thing people liked about flip-chips was how easy
they are to repair, ie, they are typicaly either transistor/resistor/diode
circuits, or possibly even simpler circuits implemented with very basic
IC's...
If someone is looking for a particular flip chip, and is willing to trade
some PDP8/E interface board for it, or something else PDP8 related, just
let me know. I picked up a bunch of flip chips reciently, i was planning
to use them in a display someday (ie, rows of flip chips plugged into
wire-wrapped backplanes).
-Lawrence LeMay
lemay(a)cs.umn.edu
