>Hmm. Interesting. That's early 1980s, if not late 1970s, correct?
I have installed in my Altair, a Compu/Time CT-102 real-time-clock
board which was purchased in 1979. This board supports a battery
backup option.
This is basically a "digital clock" chip with BCD outputs (intended to
drive BCD to 7-segment decoders) on an S-100 board. The fact that it
is a chip intended for a clock display gives rise to certain odd
characteristics:
- Certain leading digits read 'F' instead of '0' for a zero value - this
is because 'F' == Blank on the 7-segment decoder.
- To set the time, the software has to "hold down" Fast and Slow time
set buttons, and watch the time value scroll by until the desired
setting is reached - just the way a human would set a digital clock
from that era.
Photos of this card and scans if it's documentation are available in
the Altair section on my site.
Regards,
Dave
--
dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Vintage computing equipment collector.
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html
HP-75C had one built in.
-W
> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 20:39:25 -0700
> From: Marvin Johnston <marvin(a)rain.org>
>
> Assuming that you are not talking about S-100 clock/calendar
> cards, the
> Lobo Drives Max-80 had a built in clock.
>
> Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone know what was the first computer to have a
> built-in real-time
> > clock?
> >
> > --
> >
> > Sellam Ismail
> Vintage Computer Festival
>> Parts might be a bit hard to find now - uses a 6809 CPU, 6821 PIA, a 6551
>> UART, a few 6264 SRAM's, a handful of latches and 3-4 relays to move the
>And thereing lies the problem. Presumably you need to program an EPROM
>with the firmware for this 6809. Which is somewhat hard without a
>programmer :-)...
For some perhaps - at the time, myself, and almost everyone I knew worked
for companies with programmers, so it was not a problem. You could also get
EPROM programmed at the local shop for a small fee. I also had a bytesaver
in my Altair, so I could have bootstrapped up from a 2708 if I'd had to.
I didn't program the actual firmware right away - I made a EPROM (at work)
with my 6809 monitor program in it, which allowed me to download code into
the RAM (normally all used as a data buffer), where I tested and debugged
the actual firmware - When I was happy that everything was working correctly,
I use the RAM download to program a real EPROM (almost self-booting).
If I were doing the same project today, and had absolutely no access to any
means of programming the initial EPROM, I would first post in the local groups
to see if anyone near me has a programmer, failing that, I would perhaps try
this list or other more widespread resources - I'm sure that someone somewhere
would be willing to program my monitor (or even a very simple loader would
suffice) into that first EPROM for me. All you need is the ability to get code
into the device, and you can run from there.
I guess what I am saying, is that if you are not prepared to be a little
creative, you are probably not well suited to designing/building your own
test equipment.
>I built my first EPROM programmer about 18 years ago. Programs
>2716-27128, using the 'slow' algorithm. It doesn't even handle 12.5V
>parts (I should add that feature!). 3 hand-wired boards of mostly TTL,
>with a 40 pin AY-3-1015 UART in the middle. Oh yes, it's an EPROM
>emulator as well, for the same types of EPROMs.
On my original programmer (the homebuilt one), the programming voltage
was selected by a physical switch - which selected 12.5, 21 or 25v from
"taps" on a couple of stacked regulators - not the most elegant solution,
but it worked (and continues to work).
I supported the 'fast' algotithm on all by the 2732 (which would have
required me to flip one of the relays during program/read turnaround).
Ah the "good ol days"...
Regards,
Dave
--
dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Vintage computing equipment collector.
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html
>From: "ben franchuk" <bfranchuk(a)jetnet.ab.ca>
>
>Ethan Dicks wrote:
>
>>>Just pop down the block to your friendly neighbourhood tanning salon....
>> The closest one would probably be Christchurch, NZ... I'll be there in
>> mid-November.
>
>What about a big electric arc?
>Just don't weld it to the bench. :)
>
>> -ethan
>
Hi Ethan
Ben's idea is great. You just need an arc. There must be an
arc welder around the place for maintenance. Even an arc
>from a low voltage, high current power supply would work well.
The best electrodes would of course be carbon but even an
iron welding rod arc produces abundent UV across the entire
spectrum. Make sure to have something to block the UV from
you. Eye and skin damage can happen with even a small arc.
What kinds of parts do you have access to? A number of
7414's, 7400's and 74374's ( or similar families ) would
handle the logic part of connecting to a PC's parallel port.
All you'd need is a couple transistors to switch the
VPP on and a diode or two to supply bypass. As I recall,
these PROMs only need logic level switching for the actual
programming.
You don't need any counters the printer port can be divided
up to supply all the needed expansion ports using the 374's.
Of course, If you had several parallel ports from a number
of I/O boards, collected from several PC's, you could avoid
a lot of circuitry. Just run the wires to the chip.
Stretch your imagination, I'm sure you'll find that there
are many ways to skin a cat.
Dwight
Dwight
Hello, all:
I'm playing wround with the SIMH VAX emulator and I'm running NetBSD 1.6.2. I'm not too strong on Unix/variants so this might be a stupid question. I want to play around with some of the included games but I can't get them to run.
I'm logged in as root (by default, the disk image has only one user) and there's a games directory under /usr/games. Here are two typical entries:
-r-xr-sr-x 1 root games 17072 Feb 11 2004 tetris
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 49856 Feb 11 2004 trek
Can anyone tell from this why I get a "Command not found" error when I try to run any of these? I'm sure it's something prettu simple but my Unix ignorance shows.
Thanks.
Rich
Rich Cini
Just about anyone involved in home computing in SE Wisconsin
knew Don. He and I were close friends for almost thirty years
and wanted to let others who may be out of the area know about
this.
Senzig, Donald John Jr
MILWAUKEE - Age 53, passed away at his home in Milwaukee on Tuesday July 27,
2004. Born April 13, 1951 in Milwaukee ,WI. Son of Donald and Adoree
(Larson) Senzig of Caledonia, WI. Son-in Law of Ralph and Catherine Dean
Donald found the job he loved at Medpacs ,Waukesha. He had worked in the
Milwaukee Road enginehouse, Plastic Parts of Union Grove, Siemens Nuclear,
Sector Engineering, Compuware, private consulting and Milwaukee Area
Television Access (MATA).
In these diverse jobs Don consistently demonstrated his natural ability and
immense capacity to troubleshoot and repair anything that moved, whirred or
lit up. At a young age Don learned to repair TV's and electronics working
with his father Donald Senzig Sr. He repaired TV's as a hobby. In 1968 while
a student at Case High School he programmed a timeshare computer, and
participated in many theatrical productions. In 1975 Don built his first
computer from an Altair 8800 kit. How much fun it was to play "kill the
bit". Around this time, at the start of the personal computer revolution Don
arranged the first computer/gaming exhibition at a local Science Fiction
Convention. A genius at electronics and computers Don was always ready to
help people learn and to learn from them. One of his favorite collaborators
was Dorothy. Don helped authors, and Democratic candidates learn how to use
computers. With incredible patience Don could help them achieve goals that
they did not believe possible.
In 1975 Don helped found the Wisconsin Computing Society that still meets,
helping members explore computer technology.
Recenylt someone mention the SED and DED datasheets - early engineering
office humour. Just today I found in my stash a poor photocopy of the
National LM0901A... Polish Operational Amplifier. Pretty funny, very
stupid, and I must say, it really looks like a National Semi datasheet.
Anyone else hear of the this device? I bet National really wishes they had
never done this...
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
I'm finally digging into my 21MX E-series machines in earnest. In trying to
inventory and document what all I may have, I've found a few things that
stump me and my "docs on hand". Perhaps folks here can shed some light on
these. Mostly I'm looking for "confirm or deny" on some points.
Loader roms I can't positively identify:
11B5790X012 This is in a system that has microcode roms
18A0580X012,18A0580X022,18A0580X032
I'm guessing something third party, or perhaps a later rev of DS/1000 or
loader extensions? I'm clueless on these.
1816-0420 No clue
12531LDR This is a hand written tag. Perhaps for loading from the teletype
builtin paper tape reader?
1816-0769 No clue
Microcode roms I can't identify:
1816-0996
1816-0997
1816-0998
1816-0999
1816-1000
1816-1001
93585-80006
93585-80007
93585-80008
18A0580X012
18A0580X022
18A0580X032
And lastly, I'm confused about FFP. I am guessing that FFP required FP,
which is supposed to be standard on E series. But a few lines in various
docs make me think that perhaps older rev E series didn't have FP built in.
Some docs mention that when ordering FFP, you can specify option -100 to get
some additional roms, necessary for E series machines with a serial number
less than 21XX (co-incidence on the rev number). I'm guessing that the
additional roms are FP? The roms in question are:
13306-80013
13306-80014
13306-80015
13306-80016
13306-80017
13306-80018
Can anyone confirm or deny this?
Thanks!
Jay West
---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
>Does anyone know what was the first computer to have a built-in real-time
>clock?
Somewhat associated -- when I was doing some work with DSSI disks at
DEC, I found that the actual disk units (HDA and electronics) maintained
date and time and kept track of power cycle and other events.
I was never able to confirm whether the disk drives were Y2K compliant.
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL,ST| email: mbg at world.std.com |
| Member of Technical Staff | megan at savaje.com |
| SavaJe Technologies, Inc. | (s/ at /@/) |
| 100 Apollo Drive | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Chelmsford, MA 01824 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (978) 256 6521 (DEC '77-'98) | required." - mbg KB1FCA |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
