test-drb December 2001

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

243 participants
1096 discussions

by CLeyson＠aol.com

1) 1890 Hollerith Tabulation System. Mechanical machine to sort US census data. Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company, TMC, was later to merge with Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co, later to become IBM (1914) 2) 1937-41 Z1 and Z3 built by Konrad Zuse and Helmut Schreyer Z1 first binary machine. Z3 first floating point machine (used 2600 relays). Speed was 5Hz ! 3) 1937 Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC) or Harvard Mk I Part vacuum tube - part relay. Hard wired coding. Code written by Grace Hopper. According to Ms Hopper - moths would fly in through the open windows at night and get stuck in the relays. This would render the machine unless and it would have to be "de-bugged". 4) 1940 ? Enigma - Electromechanical state machine. Colossus wouldn't have been built without it. 5) 1943 Colossus - Vacuum tube code craker. Not a general purpose machine, built solely to solve Enigma ciphers. Hard wired coding and paper tape. 1500 valves. 6) 1944 ENIAC - First general purpose machine. Hard wired and paper tape program, worked in decimal. Program storage added after development of Manchester Mk I and EDSAC. 7) 1946 Manchester Mark I - First stored program computer. The Williams tube (CRT) was used for program storage. Commercial version was the Ferranti Mk I Followed by EDSAC in 1949. 8) 1951 UNIVAC - first successful commercial computer. One of the first machines to use compiled software, another of Grace Hopper's ideas. 9) 1951 LEO I (Lyons Electronic Office) J. Lyons & Company Ltd First British mainframe. Lyons bought by English Electric Company later to become ICL and the end of the British computer industry. 10) 1956 MIT Lincoln Labs TX-0 - First solid state computer 11) 1964 CDC's 6600 - Seymour Cray's first super computer, 3 MIPS 12) 1965 DEC PDP8 - The first true minicomputer 13) 1968/9 The Apollo guidance computer - Helped get man to the moon. 14) 1971 Intel 4004 - First commercially available microprocessor 15) 1972 HP 35 - Perhaps the first scientific pocket calculator ? (On the list 'cos I like HP stuff) 16) 1974 Xerox Alto - The mouse makes it's first appearence as well as windows, menus and icons. Ground breaking stuff. 17) 1975 MITS Altair 8800. First popular personal computer . 8080 based, 256 bytes of memory, no keyboard or display. Paul Allen and Bill Gates wrote a BASIC interpreter for it and the Altairs bus structure evolved into the S-100 bus. 18) 1976/7 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak produced the Apple I followed by Apple II. First popular 6502 personal computer. Atari and Commodore followed. 19) 1976 CRAY 1 - First real supercomputer ? 166 MIPS 20) 1978 DEC VAX11/780 - 4Gbyte virtual memory ! 21) 1981 The IBM PC - A veil of darkness falls Honourable mention Arcade games ought to get a mention, they created an entire industry. Atari for Asteroids, Midway for space invaders. Chris Leyson

23 years

Tall Tree Systems`JRAM-3'

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On December 2, Tony Duell wrote: > > Eventually, he found the application for it. He marketed a laser printer > > controller, that bypassed the 256K, text only, controller of the HP > > LaserJet, etc, and created complete bitmap images in RAM (on his board) in > > the PC, and dumped them straight into the printer engine. > > Sounds like it worked with a Canon CX-VDO printer. > > This is a Canon CX engine with no internal formatter (controller) board. > It still has the DC controller -- the little microcontroller board for the > mechanics, but the interface is very low level. Essentially you have : I thought that was called an LBP-CX. That was a long time ago, though, so I don't really trust my memory... -Dave -- Dave McGuire St. Petersburg, FL

23 years

Altair, 8080 assembler

by rschaefe＠gcfn.org

Anyone have a quick rundown on the front panel operations for an altair? I've been playing with altair32, but I never had the real thing, so I can only guess at what some of the switches do. And maybe recommentations on cross assemblers (x86/win32), or at least a LART in the right direction? My google searches aren't too helpful. Thanks! Bob

23 years

Tall Tree Systems`JRAM-3'

by rschaefe＠gcfn.org

Anyone know what this is? It came from a 256K IBM XT, I thought at first it was a video card, (it was in the first slot), but it's got eight banks of nine 41256 ram DIPs on it. That sounds like a lot for a mono video card, doesn't it? Combo card? it's got a looong double-row of pin sockets along the bottom just above the ISA connector, and another single row up the whole edge between the external connectors (male 9 pin & female 25 pin) and the components. Maybe a daughter board? It's got one 6-position DIP switch at the top right (^vvvv^) and 3 three-pin jumpers along the top near the rams, (xx. xx. xx.) It's got a couple've big (1/8") holes on the board, lending credence to the daughterboard theory. All the chips are labeled in an intersting way-- u84 158 is --get this-- a 74LS158N. Don't ya wish everything was made like this? The computer it came out of looks pretty interesting, aside for a decade's worth of grime on it. A whopping 256K ram on the motherboard, 2x internal floppy, Adaptec HDD controller, external (!) ummm... 20? Meg drive in a case that _looks_ like an IBM part, but it doesn't actually _say_ IBM anywhere on it. Connects via IDC connectors on ribbon cable. Strange. Have to pop the case to plug it in. I hate to think just how much this setup must've cost new. ja ne Bob

23 years

MP/M and Yaze

by spedraja＠ono.com

Hello again. I have another matter that could be interesting for somebody (I hope). The Yaze CP/M emulator v.1.20 comex with support for switched memory banks (in appearence). I couldn't review the source code by now. Somebody did it ? I should like to reconstruct one simple MP/M system under it. I know some source code can be donwloaded from http://www.cpm.z80.de and I did it, bit my next problem is related with the modules needed to construct the OS nucleus, and the order of these modules. I could need a hand too with CP/M. I have some doubts about the paper of the CBIOS.ASM and BIOS.ASM modules. Finally, I'm interesting about one fascinating CP/M emulator, the ZRPM. It does one emulation of diverse models of computers that could run CP/M like the Osborne and the Kaypro. I can say that I've loadad two versions of Wordstar for every computer under the same emulator, and loaded one or another adjusting settings internally in the ZRPM telling it was worked in a Kaypro or Osborne portable. I thought all these matters was under control of the BDOS but here are more misterious. Right ? What exactly ? Thanks and Greetings Sergio

23 years

Tall Tree Systems`JRAM-3'

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> On Sun, 2 Dec 2001, Douglas Quebbeman wrote: > > Expanded memory (Al la AboveBoard, etc) plus serial port. Daughter > > board added realtime batter-backed clock IIRC. > > Many different daughter cards. Like the Maynard's, it was basically a > system bus of their own. > > > Used one in the Zenith > > Z150 I have now (but didn't get the JRAM-3 with the Zenith). > Want? Hmmm... > If and when I can dig them out, I think that I have more than enough to > satisfy everybody who is crazy enough to want 'em. Might be useful on another XT-class machine... while the Zenith still belonged to employer, I bought a kit which modified the Zenith memory board using a new PAL to provide 768K, or 750K plus some UMBs... ISTR is was incompatible with continued use of the JRAM-3, tho... Docs/drivers? versions with the clock board? -dq

23 years

Tall Tree Systems`JRAM-3'

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Anyone know what this is? It came from a 256K IBM XT, I thought at first it > was a video card, (it was in the first slot), but it's got eight banks of > nine 41256 ram DIPs on it. That sounds like a lot for a mono video card, > doesn't it? Combo card? it's got a looong double-row of pin sockets along > the bottom just above the ISA connector, and another single row up the whole > edge between the external connectors (male 9 pin & female 25 pin) and the > components. Maybe a daughter board? It's got one 6-position DIP switch at > the top right (^vvvv^) and 3 three-pin jumpers along the top near the rams, > (xx. xx. xx.) It's got a couple've big (1/8") holes on the board, lending > credence to the daughterboard theory. All the chips are labeled in an > intersting way-- u84 158 is --get this-- a 74LS158N. Don't ya wish > everything was made like this? Expanded memory (Al la AboveBoard, etc) plus serial port. Daughter board added realtime batter-backed clock IIRC. Used one in the Zenith Z150 I have now (but didn't get the JRAM-3 with the Zenith). -dq

23 years

Apollo Guidance Computer (was History of Computing exam question)

by CLeyson＠aol.com

Found a java applet that simulates the DSKY (display and keyboard) http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Cockpit/1556/dsky.html As MIT designed the AGC's I bet they have all of the documentation filed away somewhere. Found some interesting documents at http://hrst.mit.edu/hrs/apollo/public/ 1689.pdf - "Block II keyboard and dsiplay program (RETRED44)" Gives a Block II verb/noun list 1692.pdf - "AGC4 Memo #9 Block II Instructions" Block II Memory map and instruction set Chris Leyson

23 years

Scrapping hardware to get it off the books (RE: Is it a Lisa or Mac XL?!)

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

Oops! Meant to be private... > -----Original Message----- > From: Douglas Quebbeman [mailto:dhquebbeman@theestopinalgroup.com] > Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 1:32 PM > To: 'classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org' > Subject: RE: Scrapping hardware to get it off the books (RE: Is it a > Lisa or Mac XL?!) > > > > ! I saw ... a SuperMac monitor, smaller than the 19inch > > ! Radius I've got, but the bug mentioned a "huge" one in back. > > > > Really? Any idea if they work, and what shipping to CT > > (06520-9040) might be? > > I'll make an effort to get you the info you're asking for on > this, but please be patient, I'm not sure when I can get back > there during business hours. > > > ! I have ... and/or the split keyboard. > > > > Cool. That is a neat piece of Mac history. How much? > > How about $25 plus S&H? The numeric keypad is in > great shape, but the main KB has yellowed. > > -dq >

23 years

PDP-9 lives

by bsupnik＠nauticusnet.com

Hans, First, congratulations on this terrific progress! Second, a stop at 22 is probably an unexpected CAL (opcode of 0), which would do an effective JMS 20, pick up the instruction at 21 (probably a HLT to catch the CAL), and then halt with an apparent PC = 22. Take a look at M[20], it should have the PC+1 of the CAL. /Bob -----Original Message----- From: Hans B Pufal To: classiccmp; aek(a)spies.com; Bob Supnik Sent: 12/1/01 12:59 PM Subject: PDP-9 lives I am very happy to be able to announce that the PDP-9 that we have been working on for quite some time finally began talking to the world again today. We had gotten memory and processor operational, then had to fix a memory fault which developed. TTY I/O posed some problems but finally today it spoke and we could reply. We ran the only two test routines we have on paper tape: the extended memory test and the TTY test. There appears to be some issue with the TTY since part 1 test halts after a while with PC=22, no mention of that in the test writeup! TTY test part 2 runs without error. Anyways, we plan on completeing checkout on this system, fix a couple of burnt our indicator bulbs and get the punch up before starting on the second system we have. That one has a dual dectapes, then we can read the 100 or so tapes trhat came with the system, and run some real software ;-) I'd be interested in knowing the status of other pdp-9's. Regards -- hbp for ACONIT, Grenoble France

23 years

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test-drb December 2001