Latest haul (courtesy of the new 11/750 owner I'm helping)...
o Qbus grant cards, including a single-height Intergraph "PCB518"
o Dilog DU132 tape controller (Pertec I/O, TS11/TU80 emulation)
o M7504 DEQNA (broken handle, no cab kit)
o M3106 DZQ11 (dual-height)
o M7546 TQK50
o A012 ADV11 (says "A/D for 1103" on the solder side)
o M7810 PC11 (with loopback jumper for "punch" connector)
o M7608-BP MS630-B (uVAX-II 4MB memory card)
o M8639-YB RQDX2
o M7606-AC KA630-A
o M9404 / M9405-YB Q22 Cable Connector
o M7168 / M7169 VCB02 (QDSS) 4-plane graphics
o M8739 KLESI-U ("Aztec Unibus Adapter Card")
o M-LSI-DR11 PLUS
... so plenty of uVAX-II parts and a couple of interesting items.
I have abundance of VCB02s, so if anyone wants to turn a Qbus
MicroVAX into a VAXstation, I'm sure we can work something out
(no mice, monitor cables or cab kits, I'm afraid).
-ethan
Joe writes:
> I have a project in mind that I'll be using a High Density (1.2Mb)
> floppy drive for. But it's going to take some tinkering with the jumpers to
> make it work and I'll need a manual for it. Does anyone know if where I can
> locate a manual for any of the HD drives on-line or does anyone have a
> manual (or copy) that they're willing to part with?
Teac still has manuals for their 5.25" drives on their Web site.
See http://www.teac.com/DSPD/catalog.htm#OldFD
I found a scan of a Mitsubishi MF501B/MF503B/MF504B manual on a BBC
Micro web site. See http://bbc.nvg.org/dir.php3?dir=doc/datasheets
--
Tim Mann tim(a)tim-mann.org http://www.tim-mann.org/
Saw your ad in the net today, and I am looking desperately for a power pack
for an XEC5. I am having trouble finding one, and need one as soon as
possible. I am in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl, and my email addy is Jerishepherd(a)aol.com
Phone Number 954 435-7813
Cell Number 954 600 7611
Thank you.
Jeri
OK, got a few captioned pictures of the Torch stuff up for those interested at:
http://www.moosenet.demon.co.uk/temp/torchweb/index.html
(the non-thumbnail images are around 640x480ish and between 50 and 100KB)
I've been inside everything to do some initial checks - no obvious signs of
damage and everything was pretty clean and dirt-free. Still need to test PSUs
on a dummy load etc. before I try powering anything up though.
cheers
Jules
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Hello,
I have some documentation about STAG 39M200 Module for
Stag PP39 Programmer.
I have Revision 14 Eprom for this Module.
Are You still looking for it?
Look at my resources page http://matthieu.benoit.free.fr/119.htm
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MB.
> Message: 33
> Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 08:40:32 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Ethan Dicks <erd_6502(a)yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Perkin Elmer 7300 Pro System Museum Quality!
> To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
> Reply-To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
>
> --- Mail List <mail.list(a)analog-and-digital-solutions.com> wrote:
> > Here's one some of you might like.
> >
> > Perkin Elmer 7300 Pro System Museum Quality!
> >
> > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2738081449
>
> I tried to sell one of those years ago at a hamfest. No takers at $15.
>
> We used it as a cross-development environment for COMBOARD and follow-
> on products - mostly as a departmental C compiler that would emit
> 68000 assembler (we were using Whitesmith's C on the VAX for the
> system and VMS application code).
>
> Nice little box, System III. Got mine in storage, along with all
> the diskettes and manuals.
>
> -ethan
>
>
>
System III or MicroXelos (UniPlus System V)...
There were a number of misfeatures including a very slow video card
and a bus that couldn't handle faster chips than the 68k that was in it.
I dumped a pickup truck full of 'em (7350's) in the trash after rescuing a
bunch out of Concurrent in '89 or so. Couldn't give 'em away at Trenton.
I had all the distribution software including RM/Cobol, Idris, and
stuff. Later I wanted to get my hands on a Masscomp 5550 or so to
replace it. Concurrent bought up Masscomp but getting the boxes was
nearly impossible at the time and FreeBSD and Linux made the 68010/020/030
Masscomps less than attractive in a price/performance/size kind of way.
They also needed heavy hot tubes like the early Suns did.
There was an attempt to get Concurrent to build a 68020 version of the
7350 for Perkin-Elmer (since they split into two companies) and the 68000
would barely take a 68010... but the Versabus backplane had noise and
timing issues when you tried to push it.
There was even an XF/200? version -- with 16 (IIRC serial ports).
I ran a news feed to the box at home with 2 80 meg MFM ST506 drives...
Slow but it worked. Fed it with a Trailblazer Plus and later a T2500.
Amazing, but I think the modem had more processing power.
Now the video cards have more power than the CPU's did back then.
Bill
--
d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN. Don't you wish you could still buy it now!
bpechter@shell.monmouth.com|pechter@ureach.com
> A long-time acquaintance of mine (Graham Toal, whom some of you may
> know) has access to a collection of PDP-8 paper tape which wants
> reading. Unfortunately some of it is in the care of the Royal Musuem
> in Edinburgh, who won't let it out of their sight.
> Does anyone -- preferably in the UK -- have a paper tape reader that
> could be hooked up to a modern machine (eg a laptop) to read the tapes
> in the museum, and which they'd be willing to lend?
> To see what Graham and friends are doing, take a look at
> http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/ It's worth a look even if you're not
> interested in Edinburgh.
> I know Graham reads the list, so replies here or to me are fine.
Hi Pete! Just to introduce myself to the folks here; I was an Acorn
system programmer for several years which is how I know Pete, and
I subbed to this list a couple of days ago - although my interest here
is actually in older stuff, I *do* have an absolute sh*tload of old
Acorn systems and boards that I've been trudging around for years
and I'll be glad to help with Acorn info when I can. Any of the
Acorn kit that I have which anyone needs, they're welcome to it -
I'll never use it again, I just wanted to save it from the dumper...
(for example I have lots of those 32K system/atom memory cards that
y'all were talking about earlier. In fact I have one of the System (4?)
file servers sitting on our washing machine right now that I've been
meaning to run up as soon as I can find my 110-240v transformer again!;
I've restored several hundreds of my acorn 3.5" disks but am only
very slowly restoring my 5" disks via a raw-read program that's
a pain in the arse to use; I think that job will go faster when
I get a real beeb set up with a serial line to my unix - again, the
bottleneck is a transformer. I have one somewhere but it's mislaid!
Oh - that, and no monitor :-) )
Anyway, yes, we have a significant collection of paper tapes which
I used to use personally around '76-78, at which point they were
donated to the Royal Scottish Museum. Unfortunately the curators
won't let us take them off the premises now in order to read them,
so we need to take a reader of some description into their warehouse
along with a portable PC. Even a serial ASR33 would do, although
it would be a heavy lift! We're pretty desparate here...
We also have some older paper tapes in the care of the University
computing service which *may* have things like the KDF9 Atlas Autocode
compiler on them which we also would like to read, but the PDP8
stuff is the current priority.
One of our volunteers, Chris Whitfield, went to visit Hans Pufal
last year and recovered data from some PDP9 DECtapes, including
the full source of Hamish Dewar's operating system for the PDP9/15.
Incidental to that - you may be interested in this file:
http://www.gtoal.com/grenoble/source3/8tran.000
Which is the source of the utility whose manual is here:
http://www.spies.com/~aek/pdf/dec/pdp15/DEC-15-ENZA-D_8TRAN.pdf
There's other related stuff in that same directory such as the
source to PIP. We hope to return to Grenoble some time and read
some more of those tapes. One of the tapes *MAY* be the mythical
PDP7 "Decsys" OS. At least that's what's pencilled on the tape,
and the university did own a 7 for CAD work...
We have an RL01?? (maybe an RK05?) disk pack from the Wavepower
Project's PDP11 which we think may contain "GUTS" - Groeningen
University Timesharing System - an EMAS-like personal OS written
by Harry Whitfield and his students in Groeningen. We're looking
for someone in the UK who may be able to read it. The disk format
is the same as RSX11 we think, but we'd be happy even for
a sector by sector raw copy.
We've restored the sources of several operating systems:
EMAS - on ICL2900 and IBM/XA
PDP9/15 operating system by Hamish Dewar
68000 O/S by Fred King
Mouses for the Interdata/Perkin Elmer range by Peter Robertson and Chris
Whitfield
This is all currently visible on the net but hasn't yet been
organised into a web site. I'll be working on the web site
over the coming weeks; it'll appear one day at the URL which
Pete mentioned above.
(WIP is at http://www.gtoal.com/athome/edinburgh/ )
I recognise a few of the names here. To the rest of you - nice to
meet you. I hope to stick around, although I'm reading this via
the daily digest so won't be posting as frequently as most of you
guys.
regards
Graham
> My guess is that you have normal XXX boards mounted in a non-standard
> case. Possibly the case from some other Torch product.
Yep, from some of the Torch docs I have, the case seems to be from a Torch
300-series workstation. These appear to have been the getting-more-familiar (!)
BBC core with either a Z80 or 68k Atlas board attached and optional seperate
disk cabinet. Seems like there was a stage in production where the disk ran via
a controller in the expansion cabinet from a SCSI bus whilst the floppy used a
seperate cable going to the controller on the BBC - not the 'SCSI floppy' type
setup that my XXX has.
>> wired to the back of the case though). There's also markings on the board
>> for a VME bus connection, but no socket or associated circuitry.
>
> The VME interdace is a DIN41612 plug and a few buffers. AFAIK all
> production machines had it fitted.
fair call. Don't know why mine wouldn't, even if it were a prototype - if the
circuitry's there on the card why not install the chips and sockets? Strange.
> Yes, it's analoge RGB at TV rates + 2 syncs + drive for a piezo speaker.
Ok. The Torch monitors I have all need seperate syncs - explains the RGB board
in the Torch 725 machine, which essentially seems to be a sync splitter from
the BBC's composite output.
>> labelled 'video' - but as the case is a hack who knows...
> It sounds like this case once took a BBC micro board...
yep, that fits with my 300-series theory.
> There's an 8 pin power connector on the stickleback. Is is connected to
> anything other than the PSU and the battery? The touch-switch circuitry
> is on the PSU board, and sends an interrupt over one pin of that
> connector (I can dig out schematics/pinouts if you need them).
*wanders off to check...
Just PSU and battery. Connections as follows:
^- front of board
GND o o +5V
GND o o +12V
BATT o o -5V
+5V o o nc
v- rear of board
The battery is obviously wired to ground too. 12V from the PSU also runs to the
battery via a lot of black insulation tape; I haven't looked what's under there
yet...
The PSU isn't a standard XXX PSU (which I do have one of; I see the
touch-switch connections you're talking about) - this machine has a 100W Wier
PSU in it, likely stock to the 300 series if that's where this case came from.
[Torch "Hard Disc"]
>> OK, been inside now - it is a BBC, with a Torch Z80 coprocessor. Torch SASI
>> interface hooked up to the BBC's 1MHz bus, with a Xebec interface hanging
>> off
>
> Are you sure it's SASI, not SCSI (not that it makes much difference.
Yep it is - says so on the board :) I have the manual for the Xebec interface
to which it plugs into and that's definitely SASI / ST506. There's not much to
the SASI board as it turns out - see earlier post; most of it turned out to be
comms circuitry for driving the modem and nothing to do with the drive
interface. Far as the SASI side of things is concerned, it's just some octal
buffers, latches and the like; only about ten LSxx ICs.
I had some time to mess around with the machine earlier, armed with spare BBC
for testing (which turned out to have an intermittant RAM fault so wasn't much
use :-)
Far as the Torch machine is concerned, it seems to have a power-on reset fault
such that it needs break hitting after powering up (I swapped the Torch
keyboard for a real BBC one so at least my keypresses make sense). That
shouldn't be hard to sort out.
Now, without the SASI controller plugged into the 1MHz bus, if I unplug the Z80
board I can at least get the MCP to drop into the 'no Z80' condition where it
gives an error message. I can't get that if the SASI controller is present
(whether I have any combination of Xebec board & hard drive present or not) -
just the MCP test on the screen and a flashing cursor. I'm curious why I don't
see any disk activity at all, like it's not even trying to access the hard
drive (ditto replacing that drive with a known-working unit, just with no valid
data on it). Maybe the Xebec interface is faulty...
[ Torch 725 ]
> Definitely not a Quad-X
nope :-(
I'm quite amazed Torch could produce so many different boxes all based around
the same BBC / Z80 / 68k choices though :-)
>> Information on what exactly a Torch Unicorn was would be useful, to be
>> honest.
>
> I thought it was a 68000 coprocessor for the Beeb.
Ahh, yet another case with the same guts then :)
>> I do have a spare hard disk labelled as Quad X, those tape drives and
>> controller boards, a surplus Torch-stock PSU, complete ROM set, and the
>> complete schematics for the QX VME card. I'll just go build myself
>> one... ;-)
>
> Good luck in finding that custom chip (oh, what did they call it?) that
> handles video, etc...
the Openchip? True. I do have the programming guide and the spec (which I
believe you said that you had), but unfortunately not the chip. I bet the guy I
got this stuff from has a whole pile of them!
[tape drives]
> Oh, it just hooks up to the SCSI bus... It's getting the software sorted
> out that's the problem.
ahh, fair enough. Not come across anything that'll help you yet though :-(
> Still, it can't be worse than the PERQ3a. On that infernal machine, the
> minor device numbers have no relation to the SCSI addresses at all!
take the ol' tial-and-error approach huh? :)
> The Manta is something I know nothing about, so if you have technical
> docs I'd be interested in probing you for information...
yep, I do - no schematics though :-)
Just skimmed the docs, and it looks like it's a pretty flexible unit supporting
up to 4 drives, which can be just about anything by the looks of it. Although
there are built-in definitions for common drives I get the impression it's all
pretty flexible so just about anything can be defined. Parameters can be set
for a given drive, including data rate (125/250/500KB per sec), number of heads
(i.e SS/DS), bytes per sector (128/256/512/1024), sectors per track (0..244),
cylinders (0..245), write precomp, step rate, head settle delay, motor on/off
delays, starting sector number etc.
There's also a parameter for setting the relationship between logical and
physical steps, for e.g. formatting a 40 track disk in an 80 track drive.
They actually look like quite nice boards... one of those in the PC could come
in handy...
cheers
Jules
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