>from Fred van Kempen
Al,
Can you ask the list, or anyone, if anyone has an old Seagate ST01
and/or ST02 controller available? I cant post to the list from
my biz address..
--
I think these were PC scsi cards.
/me just got a early Xmas present.
I got what should be a relatively complete Vax 4000-300, console,
cables, and w/ some form of MO jukebox. Might even have a line on a
small pile of tapes for the thing..
I don't know very little about the spec's on the box, as I literally
just got ahold of it.. Looks like its got a fair bit of SCSI, and
Ethernet in it. I'd guess its only got 32Mb of memory as I only saw
one obvious MS670 memory board. (It took that many chips to make 32MB!?)
The only concern I've got is, while its been stored in doors most of its
life, its been outdoors since Monday, and its gotten _COLD_. I think
it'll need a day or two just to warm up.
I see what appears to be at least some documentation up on bitsavers, at
least the phrase KA670 seems to match up what's on the little tag at the
bottom of the unit.
Does anyone have any other suggested hardware documentation site's they
think would be worthwhile to point me at?
Thanks,
/me goes back to poking at the innards. :-)
David
All this talk about the Intel iPDS has peaked my interest, at least for
now. So I have been doing a little investigation on what exactly I have
and here are some of the details.
The iPDS is an 8085-based portable development system. PDS was said to
stand for Personal Development System or Portable Development System.
Intel's manual called it Personal Development System, so that must be it.
The main processor board (and it was one monolithic system board with
cables to the keyboard, crt, and floppy drive. Besides the main cpu
with 64KB of ram, there was a second 8085 that implemented the keyboard
and crt terminal. So the main cpu only talked through an I/O port to
get "console in" and "console out". The main board also had an 8272 (I
think that was the chip) to control the floppy drive.
It had one internal 96-tpi double-sided floppy drive that held about
650K bytes. It used MFM encoding, I guess required by the 8272.
There were three connectors on the back panel for I/O. One was a serial
port. It was a 25-pin D female. It could be jumpered to appear as a
DCE or a DTE. From the factory it was strapped to be a DCE. That was
probably to be consistent with the MDS-800 and port 1 of the Series II.
The 800 required, and the Series II accomodated an external crt terminal
as the "console". Since the iPDS had an integral console (built-in crt
and keyboard) I strapped my serial port to be a DTE so that I could
connect it directly to a modem. In those days, of course, the BBS was
dominate for communications to the world, and a modem was highly
desirable for that.
There was also a 25-pin D female connector to drive a
Centronix-compatible printer. It used the same pinout as the 800 and
the Series II.
Finally there was a 37-pin D female that could connect up an external
floppy drive. Remember, the standard iPDS from Intel had only one
floppy drive built in.
One very cool option was a second cpu board. It has its own 8085 and
64K of ram. It cabled to the main processor board and would use the
integral keyboard, crt, and floppy with the use of a software semaphore
to prevent both processors from accessing a device at the same time.
Another option was a daughter board that accomodated up to four iSBX
boards. When that was installed you could install one or two iSBX-251
bubble memory cards. Those cards were 128K bytes in size and the
operating systems from Intel would support them as logical disk drives.
You could even boot from the internal bubble device. Very advanced for
its time, I'd say.
Intel, of course, wanted users to take advantage of their ISIS-PDS
operating system. It would boot from the bubble or from the floppy
drive. And with ISIS, the file and device locking routines would allow
both cpu's, if you had the optional second processor installed, to boot,
access files, etc, and you could switch between the processors with a
function key. It was truly a multi-processor system, actually two very
logically distinct computers in one. Often I would be editing one file
while compiling, linking, locating, etc, another file, using both cpu's
that way. Remember, of course, the only operating systems for small
computers like that were single-user, single-tasking.
Intel also sold a version of CP/M-80 V2.2 for the iPDS. But due to
licensing issues, and possibly technical issues, CP/M would only boot
>from one of the two processors. It was simply software in the BIOS to
disable the "B" processor. However, a clever workaround was to have
ISIS loaded in a bubble device, boot one processor from that device, and
let the other boot from CP/M on the floppy drive. There were times that
I would document a project that I was working on using Wordstar on a
CP/M-booted processor while developing code on the ISIS-booted processor.
I have a good collection of software for the iPDS, so if anyone who has
a working machine, I would be willing to send out copies of what I
have. I have made Teledisk images of boot floppies that can be
recreated on an IBM-AT compatible on the HD drive. I also have decent
comm software that will transfer files through the serial port to and
>from a PC.
Oh well, I guess you can see how bored I am to spend Christmas Eve
typing this up, but I wanted to get it written down while it was all
fresh in my mind.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!!!
Dave Mabry
that was the seeyuzz river...
At 09:48 PM 12/31/2004, Dave Mabry wrote:
>Who was it who wanted to know more about the multimodule addon board for
>the iPDS? I have a photo that I can send to him. Let me know.
>
>Dave
At 15:33 30/12/2004 -0800, you wrote:
>> Anyone here know anything about the "MicroWAT" computer, which was
>> developed at the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada around 1980.
>>
>> I just acquired one - this is a small 6809 based computer, which I am
>> told is very similar/somewhat compatible with the Waterloo 6809 coprocessor
>> in the Commodore SuperPET.
>
>Actually, according to my information, it *is* a SuperPET. See
>
> http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/pet.html
Thanks - I too found this reference, however it is in error - the MicroWAT I have is
actually a stand-alone computer in a small box with a power supply, small card cage,
three serial ports and an IEEE connector (I have one here in front of me).
I also did uncover a Waterloo document entitled:
"Waterloo Microcomputer Systems for the 1980's"
by D.D. Cowan and J.W. Graham at the University of Waterloo
in which they describe the MicroWAT and the SuperPET as separate systems:
"It was noted that on campus there were more than 1000 'dumb' ASCII terminals, mostly
with CRTs and keyboards, and a study was initiated to consider the problems in their
conversion to personal workstations meeting our specifications. The study led to the
design of the microWAT a prototype of which became operational in December 1980 ..."
"The microWAT is a computer system of one or more circuit boards mounted on a rather
simple bus. A typical system consists of 4 cards, namely the CPU card, 48K RAM card,
64k bank-switched ROM card and the IEEE-488 bus interface card. The system can be
mounted inside most of our ASCII terminals ... If desired or necessary, the microWAT
can be mounted in its own chassis with it's own power supply."
"At the same time as the development of the microWAT, we investigated the possibility
of expanding existing microcomputers by providing them with a large memory so that they
could incorporate our planned software. We modified a PET microcomputer by adding 64k
of bank-switched RAM, a 6809 microprocessor and an RS232 interface. This design
eventually let to the Commodore SuperPET which is a personal workstation similar to the
microWAT".
>From there it goes on to describe the waterloo software and languages, with no real
distinction between the microWAT the the SuperPET - so the above is really all I know
for certain about the microWAT, however it does appear to be distinct from, but related
to the SuperPET.
Once the holidays are over, I will contact the curator of the York museum in Toronto,
as I am certain that he has mentioned to me in past conversation a stand-alone 6809 based
system that was developed at Waterloo - perhaps he will be able to fill in some details,
however if anyone else has information to offer, please do step forward.
Regards,
Dave
--
dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda - Happy new year
To all on the list.
I'm a republican - but not in the way you're thinking ! ( :^)
Geoff.
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.298 / Virus Database: 265.6.7 - Release Date: 30/12/04
The auction for the nearly complete Votrax PSS is almost over! Come on, I'm
hoping someone on the list manages to get it in the end, because it has the
complete manual, including the advanced procedures section and the section
about updating the internal list of substitution words! (the seller sent me
that info)
Here's the auction link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=162&item=5151487740&…
I hope to see the whole thing scanned (and I want to see the scans too).
Jonathan Gevaryahu
lord_nightmare_(a)t_users.sf.net
jgevaryahu_(a)t_hotmail.com
I am looking to exchange notes and information with anyone else who owns RM05's and/or CDC-9766 300MB SMD drives.
You can contact me off-list: curt(a)atarimuseum.com
Thanks,
Curt
I'm seeking the following software for a client:
Title Publisher
Context MBA Context Management Systems
Open Access Software Products International
Intuit Noumenon Corp.
Aura Softrend, Inc.
Jack2 Business Solutions
The Incredible Jack Business Solutions
Jack Report Business Solutions
Has ya gots any? E-mail me directly and let's talk! Looking to buy and
will pay generously.
Only one more day but I'll beat everyone to it:
Happy New Year!
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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