Hi Al
I finally got time to play with the Cannnon Cat.
It powers up just fine and seems to run the disk
OK as well. The battery is dead but that doesn't
seem to be an issue.
I fiddled with it some and found that if I hold
the button in the back down during power up, it
goes into the diagnostics. I know there is a way
to cause it to go to the Forth prompt but I don't
recall how it was done. If I can find a fellow named
John Bumbgardener ( sp? ), he knows all of the tricks
for these.
Dwight
G'day Guys,
just came across your query about 7181s. If you're still interested, here's some info:-
These were an ICL-manufactured 2000 character text video terminal used for a variety of purposes in the early seventies. They were a replacement for the Cossor DIDS units.
While later modules used new-fangled MOS memory, earlier models used a circular wire accoustic delay-line as the data storage element. In theory, this unit was in synch with the CRT scanning such that, as the electron beam reached a particular spot on the screen, the data for the character at that spot would just be appearing at the delay-line output. The speed of the data through the delay line was notoriously temperature sensative - a real problem in Australia if the air-conditioning broke down in summer!
The spot scanning method was a little bizarre also - there were only 25 horizontal scans per frame but there was a small high frequency vertical scan component superimposed on the normal vertical scan, such during each of the 25 horizontal line scans, the beam 'painted' each character in that line character-by-character as it traversed the screen. ( Very different from the ~500+ pixel-line scan universally adopted by just about everyone else!. )
The keyboards were a parallel data design, and those fitted to the early 7181s were fitted with Hall-effect switch key modules ( I have a logic diagram of one of these somewhere! ) - a real "find" for the hobbyist!
The 7181s on which I worked ( around 1972 ), talked across a synchronous V24 link to ICL System 4 mainframes. They used ICL's proprietary C03 protocol where multi-dropped terminals on one comms link could be individually polled for outstanding messages. Thus the operators were effectively entering data 'off-line' until they pressed the 'send' key, whereupon the next poll to that terminal would result in the date being transferred to the mainframe.
Cheers
Fred
I have one of these Plastic cased Apples. One question I do have is what sort of keyboard they use. The keyboard conector on the mother board is wited directly to a nine pin serial socket on the back of the machine. Does it use the standard Apple II keyboard in a special case?? I seem to remember seeing info on how to wire an IBM keyboard to an apple some where. Can this be done for this machine?? Or am I mistaken. In spite of my small collection of Apple II parts I have never really taken much notice of these machines until recently when I have decided to do a "clean out" so advice on how to get this Apple in a more useable state would be apreciated......
Peter T.
> Looking at the motherboard it looks like a generic Apple ][+ clone. Clones
> based on the same motherboard were sold here (Australia) in XT style cases
> like the one you have, smaller plastic desktop cases (floppy drives side by
> side) and Apple ][ style cases with external drives. I've had all three
> variants over time. I've seens ads for a luggable version with an internal
> mono monitor, but I've never found one.
Hello I have a Osborne 1b and when a boot up to CP/M everything on the A:
disks works .But when I try to
switch to the B: drive I get a R/W error. But If I format a disk on the B
drive or A drive it formats it then B drive works with the floppy I formated
and all other software disks work. But when I turn the osborne off and unplug
it. after about 20 min unpluged I get the same error with drive B: and I have
to the same thing.
Is there a any fix for this?
Thanks
Casey.
Hi everyone, I've got a rare, almost borderline classic-cmp system that I
found very interesting up for auction on ebay. I'm hoping a gentle soul
will take it in and give it some play time.
Pictures of the boombox stereo looking system:
http://www.hudat.com/~florit/20030624-MotorolaPowerstack/
Getting to the mid-90s there was a lot of evolution in processor designs
taking place; there was a question as to which company would lead the
way into the future; some big players at the time were MIPS, Digital's
Alpha, The IBM/Motorola/Apple consortium led PowerPC, and of course,
Intel's x86 line. There was plenty of doubt at the time, because
Microsoft, who was just then putting out Windows NT 4, supported all of
these processors! We all know how the face off ended up.
The system I have here is a Motorola Powerstack. It is super rare, I've
only seen one other on ebay in 3 years. Its in great shape. I can run a
myriad of operating systems: IBM's AIX, WinNT 4, Linux PPC and aparently a
beta version of Solaris 2.5 for PowerPCs. As I understand, this system
runs the PReP Openfirmware (replaces functions of PC's Bios is a more
clean manner).
Its called a PowerStack because you can add drive chassis by stacking them
on top and adding power and scsi chain cables. In effect, you can make
this a low profile computer by removing the section that contains the dat
drive, currently.
Motorola PowerPC 603e, 100mhz, 64MB ram. SCSI is onboard SCSI-2, with two
one inch high removable media device bays, one one inch high non-removable
bay for disk, and the scsi expansion enclosure. This particular model is
loaded with a thin profile CDROM, floppy drive, 4 gig harddrive, and DAT
tape drive (unknown size; 1 or 2g?). It has all kinds of interesting
ports on the backside. Video is on a PCI card (Cirrus Logic?), and audio
is onboard. There are three PCI slots on a riser board.
This system is in distinguished company: It has an actual removable key to
start and stop the system. I'm including the system manual, very useful
to find out how to assemble/dissasemble the system to get to the insides.
Included are the cables to connect the expansion bay scsi. I will also
ship the original copy of Sun Solaris 2.5 Beta that was inside the
Powerstack when I got it and the CDs with the debian linux ppc I was
planning to install. I did not complete the install of debian linux, so it
does not boot into the OS; there are some configuration issues to work
out- I'd recommend a fresher and newer version of Debian anyhow, as this
one is at least 3 years old.
Here's the auction link, if you think you're interested:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2742423893&category=4610
If you have any questions, please ask away.
I was given an interesting machine on the weekend. I was told it was an Apple
clone from Saudi Arabia. One of the manuals that came with it says micom,
but it doesn't look like my other one which is in a apple II style case with
the built in keyboard. This is in what from the front looks like a PC clone
with the dual floppies, and an external keyboard which is missing.
http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600/clone.jpg
This time I set the camera to the lowest setting so the picture should be a
little easier to view.
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 00:20:21 +0100 (MET)
From: "Fred N. van Kempen" <waltje(a)InfoMagic.NL>
To: dwight(a)linuxtoday.com, lwn(a)lwn.net, lweditors(a)linuxworld.com,
Subject: Re: Linux.net
Hey guys,
Just thought I'd drop you a note to let you know that I've finally sold
the linux.net domain. It took a while (about 15 people have bid on the
domain) to find someone who had plans to do something worthwhile with
it, but that finally happened last week. I'm not allowed to tell you who
actually bought the domain, because they apparently have some big
announcement planned for LinuxWorld next week, but I can tell you this:
It's *definitely not* Microsoft, and they're planning some cool &
useful things for the site.
Cheers,
Fred
--
Fred N. van Kempen, MCSE waltje(a)InfoMagic.NL
InfoMagic Nederland VOF ICQ: 2944198 WWW:
<http://www.infomagic.nl/~waltje>http://www.infomagic.nl/~waltje
Postbus 1185, 1400 BD BUSSUM NL +31 (35) 6980059 FAX +31 (35) 6980215
UNIX, Windows NT BackOffice and Internetworking Consultants
----------------
I have been reading some of the code you wrote in the
early 1990's, lib/getargs.c
So doing a little google search turned up the attached
message. Going to the www.linux.net web page turned
up nothing of interest. May I ask Who bought the
name from you and what WERE there plans? Seems that
all has gone by the way-side.
Thanks,
-- Bill (fisher(a)fabric7.com
-- Bill (fisher(a)fabric7.com)
Last week I purchased an HP Integral :-). For those who've not heard of
it, it's a mains-powered portable with a 68000 processor that runs HP-UX :-).
Of course I've taken it apart. There are 2 main PCBs, one each side of
a vertically-mounted chassis plate.
'Logic A' on the rear of the plate contains the CPU, 512K RAM (and
controller), the 'MMU' (a simple RAM mapping circuit), address decoders,
bus buffers, and the HP-HIL port (for the keyboard and optional mouse).
'Logic B' on the front of the plate contains the real time clock, floppy
controller, beeper (controller by an odd NatSemi sound chip, COP452 I
think - -I have the datasheet), HPIB interface and the Thinkjet printer
electronics (with a 1LB£ HPIL chip to link the Thinkjet CPU to the 68000
bus).
Also in the case is a Sony full-height 600rpm 3.5" floppy drive, a SMPSU,
the Thinkjet mechanics, a Sharp dot-matrix display and the expansion
backplane (2 slots, using DIN41612 connectors).
The system ROMs are in a plastic cartridge that plugs into the Logic A
PCB. There's a PCB in said cartridge containing 4 EPROMS (128K bytes
each) and a TTL glue chip. It's obvious a daughterboard containing
another 4 EPROMs could be fitted in the cartridge. The EPORMs I have
contain the HP-UX Kernel and PAM (a rather lusing shell). I am told
daughterboards containing HP Technical BASIC (which I have on floppy) and
some more unix commands existed.
The 2 expansion slots on my machine contain a 1M RAM card and an interface
for an external expansion chassis which I don't have. The latter has a 64
pin Blue Ribbon connector on it (I've never seen one this large!) which I
guess is just a buffered version of the normal expansion bus.
OK, a few questions.
I asusem that ROM daugtherboards are impossible to obtain, but has anyone
dumped the ROMS from one?
Any ideas if it's ever possible to find the GPIO and serial interface
cards for these machines?
Any software out there on the net for it? I have the normal HP disk set
(System disk, HP-UX commands (2 disks), Utilities, Diagnostics, Tutor,
and NP Technical BASIC).
Anything else I should know about it?
-tony
