test-drb November 2004

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

207 participants
458 discussions

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

I've been cleaning and repairing the Flexowriter today. While I was working on it I took some pictures. Here they are. The first ones show it just the way that I got it. This <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/flexo/front.jpg> is what it looked like when I got it. Here is a picture of the left side with the PT reader and punch <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/flexo/punch-reader.jpg>. Here is a picture of the back showing the label <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/flexo/label.jpg>. Right hand side <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/flexo/right.jpg>. One of neat things about it is that it has a stand built into the back of it so that you can stand it up and work underneath it. Here is a picture of the stand <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/flexo/stand.jpg>. It has two shafts that stick out of the back on the machine near the top and a shaft with two wheels that runs across the bottom. The wheels on the shaft are wood! OK enough of the "dirty" pictures. Here's some more after I cleaned it up a bit. Here's what the bottom looks like. Note that it's sitting up on the built-in stand. <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/flexo/bottom.jpg>. Here are closeups of the motor and the two connectors coming from the PT Reader and Punch <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/flexo/motor.jpg>. Here is a closeup of the PT punch with the cover removed, <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/flexo/punch.jpg>. And here is a close up of the PT Reader with the cover removed, <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/flexo/reader.jpg>. Another close up of the bottom showing the self tensioner for the carriage drive belt and AC terminal strip. The last picture shows the "stuff" on the RH side with the cover removed. The switches at the RH are used to generate the six bit character code. I believe the round deice in the center is the clutch for the carriage drive belt. It seems to be stuck ON at the moment. The belt in the picture is the one that drives the carriage left and right. I'm not sure what the electromagnet on the bottom left is for. The power switch is shown above the electromagnet. <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/flexo/carriage%20clutch.jpg>. Joe

19 years, 6 months

GPIB Interface

by technobug＠comcast.net

For those interested in hooking up GPIB equipment to your VAXen, I ran across on ePay an IEZ11 SCSI to GPIB interface that was designed for VMS. <http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ViewItem&category=39969&item=5136038770&rd=1>. Open VMS has a driver for the beast albeit retired... CRC

19 years, 6 months

Big Iron available - Data General Eclipse - plus lots more smaller stuff

by classiccmp＠vintage-computer.com

I went by my local recycler yesterday on the hunt for some items and came away with a list of stuff that might interest folks here. The main item was a DG Eclipse system in two racks with tape drives and more. I didn't spend much time looking at it but can probably get more information if anyone wants it. I also have no idea what the price would be but I can guess that shipping would be the big consideration anyway. The same place had a bunch of smaller items as well including a very clean TRS-80 Mod 3 with a RS dustcover, a Kaypro II, a Franklin Ace 1000, a CoCo that looked like it had seen better days, what looked like an IBM PC Portable in its canvas bag, and a Compupro system with the main chassis and a dual 8" chassis as well (this was wrapped in a pallet and those were the items I could recognize. There's a few cubic yards of other stuff mixed in that may or may not be related.) There were also a good number of vintage terminals stacked about. Several ADM3as in both blue and beige in various states of decay. Most looked serviceable with a couple having a bit of screen rot. The couple I turned on worked. None had the switch covers. There was also a Hazeltine 1500 in nice shape except for the fact that the video was bad and some TeleVideo 925s and 950s that worked but needed TLC. Newer terminals (DEC and Wyse, mostly) were all over the place. There was at least one VT100 that was marked as dead but that looked like it had all of the (yellow) parts. If anyone wants more info on any of this I'll be happy to get what I can or to put you in touch with the shop. Erik Klein www.vintage-computer.com www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum The Vintage Computer Forum

19 years, 6 months

Rescue Help Needed in Texas

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

I will be renting a UHAUL truck on Saturday (11/6) to pickup some items about 20 miles outside of Austin and could use some muscle power. If anyone on the list lives close to Austin and could meet me at the UHAUL place on 290 W. (in Austin) contact me off list. Thanks I will leaving Houston around 7AM and be getting there no later than 10:30AM to pick up the truck and drive on from there.

19 years, 6 months

Surviving UK Transputer systems...

by RMeenaks＠OLF.COM

The transputer CPU was made by INMOS (which was later bought out by SGS-Thompson which became ST-Microelectronics). However, there were several manufacturers of transputer equipment. Some of the popular ones are INMOS, Transtech, Niche, Parsytec, Sundance, and Parsys. See the specs page for a list of vendors. This is not complete at all and only contains vendors I have info on. What type of INMOS stuff do you have??? Thanks, Ram -----Original Message----- From: Joe R. [mailto:rigdonj@cfl.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 9:11 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: RE: Surviving UK Transputer systems... At 08:17 AM 11/4/04 -0500, Ram wrote: >A transputer is just like any other processor with memory, etc, etc. >Except that it has two unique attributes: > >1) Has communication links so that you can hook it up to other >transputer nodes (or other peripherals). This allowed you to create a >multiprocessor system with several nodes (seen transputer networks of >1024 nodes at one time). It was like LEGO for parallel processing. >The technology that was designed for the transputer is now slowing >creaping into modern processors. Not bad for a mid 80's processor.... > >2) Has micro-coded scheduler which allows you to create multi-processes >inside a single CPU. It supported two priorities in high and low. You >could do parallel processing in assembly with this baby! This is all >embedded inside the CPU core. Designed around the mid 80's and had an >EOL >(End-of-life) around the late 90's. Quite a remarkable CPU and it was quite >fast too compared to the 386 of that era. See my website at >http://www.classiccmp.org/transputer for more info/links... I looked at the data sheets on your website so that I would know that the parts and part numbers looked like. Does anyone other that INMOS and Thompson make these? I find lots of parallel computing equipment so there should be some transputer stuff in there too. I have found a lot of high speed parallel stuff with INMOS parts but I think it's older (early 80s) than the transputers. But the transputer stuff should show up one day. Joe (c) 2004 OpenLink Financial Copyright in this message and any attachments remains with us. It is confidential and may be legally privileged. If this message is not intended for you it must not be read, copied or used by you or disclosed to anyone else. Please advise the sender immediately if you have received this message in error. Although this message and any attachments are believed to be free of any virus or other defect that might affect any computer system into which it is received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that it is virus free and no responsibility is accepted by Open Link Financial, Inc. for any loss or damage in any way arising from its use.

19 years, 6 months

Surviving UK Transputer systems...

by RMeenaks＠OLF.COM

Meiko was actually started by a bunch of former INMOS engineers. They made their own hardware/software. They had several Computing Surfaces through the years. The early ones were transputer based and then they switch to Sparc processors..... Ram -----Original Message----- From: Jules Richardson [mailto:julesrichardsonuk@yahoo.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 9:31 AM To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Subject: RE: Surviving UK Transputer systems... On Thu, 2004-11-04 at 09:10 -0500, Joe R. wrote: > Does anyone other that INMOS and Thompson make these? I remember using a Meiko computer surface way back when, but I suspect that may have just been a bunch of Inmos boards behind the scenes (or something else, and didn't even qualify as a strict transputer system) Details on the web seem rather hazy unfortunately. cheers Jules (c) 2004 OpenLink Financial Copyright in this message and any attachments remains with us. It is confidential and may be legally privileged. If this message is not intended for you it must not be read, copied or used by you or disclosed to anyone else. Please advise the sender immediately if you have received this message in error. Although this message and any attachments are believed to be free of any virus or other defect that might affect any computer system into which it is received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that it is virus free and no responsibility is accepted by Open Link Financial, Inc. for any loss or damage in any way arising from its use.

19 years, 6 months

Surviving UK Transputer systems...

by RMeenaks＠OLF.COM

A transputer is just like any other processor with memory, etc, etc. Except that it has two unique attributes: 1) Has communication links so that you can hook it up to other transputer nodes (or other peripherals). This allowed you to create a multiprocessor system with several nodes (seen transputer networks of 1024 nodes at one time). It was like LEGO for parallel processing. The technology that was designed for the transputer is now slowing creaping into modern processors. Not bad for a mid 80's processor.... 2) Has micro-coded scheduler which allows you to create multi-processes inside a single CPU. It supported two priorities in high and low. You could do parallel processing in assembly with this baby! This is all embedded inside the CPU core. Designed around the mid 80's and had an EOL (End-of-life) around the late 90's. Quite a remarkable CPU and it was quite fast too compared to the 386 of that era. See my website at http://www.classiccmp.org/transputer for more info/links... Cheers, Ram -----Original Message----- From: charlesb(a)otcgaming.net [mailto:charlesb@otcgaming.net] Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 6:34 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Surviving UK Transputer systems... excuse the stupid question, but what's a transputer? is it just like a cluster in a box ? ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Honniball" <coredump(a)gifford.co.uk> To: <julesrichardsonuk(a)yahoo.co.uk>; "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 11:10 PM Subject: Re: Surviving UK Transputer systems... > Jules Richardson wrote: >> Does anyone know of any complete Transputer systems (i.e. several >> processors, cabinet, front-end control system etc.) from the '90's >> that still survive within the UK? --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.788 / Virus Database: 533 - Release Date: 01/11/2004 (c) 2004 OpenLink Financial Copyright in this message and any attachments remains with us. It is confidential and may be legally privileged. If this message is not intended for you it must not be read, copied or used by you or disclosed to anyone else. Please advise the sender immediately if you have received this message in error. Although this message and any attachments are believed to be free of any virus or other defect that might affect any computer system into which it is received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that it is virus free and no responsibility is accepted by Open Link Financial, Inc. for any loss or damage in any way arising from its use.

19 years, 6 months

A new transputer toy....

by RMeenaks＠OLF.COM

Just picked up an IMSB300-1 on ebay. This is cool as now I can connect my transputer processors on the network and access them from any machine on the net. Brings new life to an old friend. After opening it up, much to my amusement, it is really an off-the-shelf package. It contains nothing but: 1 IMSB018 - standalone transputer board 1 IMSB019 - differential link convertor board 1 IMSB404 - T425-based Size-2 TRAM 1 IMSB431 - Ethernet TRAM and it boots off of a firmware that is on the IMSB018. That's basically it. Anyone know how to connect this to a B004/B008? It didn't come with any cables etc. The links are differential, so I guess I can just connect this to a differential tram, right?? Cheers, Ram (c) 2004 OpenLink Financial Copyright in this message and any attachments remains with us. It is confidential and may be legally privileged. If this message is not intended for you it must not be read, copied or used by you or disclosed to anyone else. Please advise the sender immediately if you have received this message in error. Although this message and any attachments are believed to be free of any virus or other defect that might affect any computer system into which it is received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that it is virus free and no responsibility is accepted by Open Link Financial, Inc. for any loss or damage in any way arising from its use.

19 years, 6 months

Surviving UK Transputer systems...

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Ram's message prompted me to post this, although it's been on my mind for a while. Does anyone know of any complete Transputer systems (i.e. several processors, cabinet, front-end control system etc.) from the '90's that still survive within the UK? I'd like to get one for the museum sometime as we don't have any transputer equipment at present, and it'd be nice to have one on display and running. My old uni used to have a 140 CPU one that was capable of doing some nice ray tracing, but I've been unable so far to find out if they still have it. I imagine it's long gone and either dismantled or scrapped. Seems like individual bits turn up all the time (although probably with a high price tag which doesn't exactly suit a museum!) but not any big systems. If anyone knows of any company that used to have anything that might stand a chance of still being complete and just shelved in storage anywhere, I could make some enquiries... cheersy-bye Jules -- The most secure computer in the world is one not connected to the internet. That's why I recommend NTL.

19 years, 6 months

Surviving UK Transputer systems...

by RMeenaks＠OLF.COM

The board is a Niche Technologies NT1000 Advanced Computing Platform. Never seen one, but that is what it is. Niche became absorbed somewhat by Transtech later on. So, some of their products were later manufactured by transtech. The NT1000 was re-named to something else by transtech, don't remember the name. I get back to you on that. Niche made several sun transputer boards. Martin Frank OAKES used to work there and when Niche got bought out, they formed K-Par Systems which designed software and some hardware as well. I talked to Martin a while back, very nice chap. Talk to him if you need more details. His website is: http://www.vine.co.uk/ Cheers. Ram -----Original Message----- From: ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk [mailto:ard@p850ug1.demon.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 12:07 AM To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Surviving UK Transputer systems... > > 9U. Do you got a picture of this? Never seen a 9U Eurocard > transputer No picture yet. I can take one sometime, but it will be on film (and I have no scanner), as I will only buy a digitial camera when the quality exceeds that of my existing medium and large format film cameras... It looks like a normal Sun 3 board (with the metal pannel, carrying some DC37 connectors, presumanly for external trasnputer links). > board. Who made it? Whats wrong with that Museum??? It claims to be have been made by Niche Technologies Ltd. Never heard of them. As regards what's wrong with the museum, I'd rather my machines were used by people who actually appreciate them. That's quita apart from the fact that I've had experience of said museum and some of their policies (at least 10 years ago) left a lot to be desired. -tony (c) 2004 OpenLink Financial Copyright in this message and any attachments remains with us. It is confidential and may be legally privileged. If this message is not intended for you it must not be read, copied or used by you or disclosed to anyone else. Please advise the sender immediately if you have received this message in error. Although this message and any attachments are believed to be free of any virus or other defect that might affect any computer system into which it is received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that it is virus free and no responsibility is accepted by Open Link Financial, Inc. for any loss or damage in any way arising from its use.

19 years, 6 months

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test-drb November 2004