Hi,
If anyone has an original copy of the above (either one; I believe
the first one is VenturCom's naming, and the latter is DEC's naming)
and could be persuaded to part with it for a reasonable price, pse
contact me off-list !
Thanks,
Fred
--
Fred N. van Kempen, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Collector/Archivist
Visit the VAXlab Project at http://VAXlab.pdp11.nl/
Visit the Archives at http://www.pdp11.nl/
Email: waltje(a)pdp11.nl BUSSUM, THE NETHERLANDS / Mountain View, CA, USA
Hi Guys,
Still slogging away at our big pile of Commodore PET
equipment. (Having a pretty good success rate so far
- thank god for funet!)
Todays's victims are:
1) Commodore SFD-1001
This is the IEEE-488 (PET) single-drive that looks
very much like a VIC/C64 1541 serial drive.
The drive powers on, and both the POWER and drive LED
come on solid RED and stay that way - no other activity
is observed - it doesn't matter if the IEEE bus is
connected or not, and resetting the IEEE bus (via PET
power-on) has no effect. If the PET tries to access the
IEEE bus, it hangs, presumably waiting for an acknowlege
that never comes (?)
It looks like the on-board CPU is not running at all.
I found some schematics on funet, however I have no experience
with this particular drive at all - anyone have any tips or
pointers? Any known common faults with these symptoms?
2) This is an MSD-SD2, a third party "clone" of the Commodore 2040/4040
drive (Yeah, I know it's not an exact clone as the internals are
different, but it reads/writes 4040 disk format).
This drive powers on and repeatedly flashed an error code consisting
of seven (7) flashes of all three LED's (POWER, Drive1, Drive2).
I can find no service information on this drive at all.
Looking for:
- Info on what the error code means.
- Schematics
- Any other service info/tips.
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
Damm! We took a direct hit with hurricane Charlie. Then a NEAR miss
with hurricane Frances. (It took 4 1/2 > DAYS < to pass through!) Then
another narrow miss with hurricane Ivan. I just looked at the weather
forecast and now there's another one headed this way! Hurricane Jeanne is
expected to hit the east coast of Florida around Monday. Is somebody trying
to tell us something?
Joe
>From: "Tom Jennings" <tomj(a)wps.com>
>
>On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 07:39, Ade Vickers wrote:
>
>> If each relay needs, say, 25mA @ 6v to operate, then the peak current
>> draw
>> of our R80 (as I shall call it) could be around 600A (I think). And
>> that's
>> before we've added memory, i/o, etc.
>
>Last things first :-) the place to look for this is telco. They did
>really for real. Most of them are 48V; it lowers current plus higher
>voltages help with the inductive time constant thing (take a look at how
>teletype loops are done; HV, a series resistor shortens the *effective*
>time constant (eg. the time to reach 60mA in the tty case).
>
>
Hi
Increasing the resistance doesn't change the power needed
to pull in the armature, all it does is decrease the time
constant for a particular inductance. Higher voltages require
more resistance in the wire, meaning more turns. The pulling
effect on the armature is just ampere-turns. Using more resistance
just means higher voltage. E^2.
One can do the same thing by adding a resistor in series with
the 6V coil and using a higher drive voltage. Power wise, it is
a loss. You still need the effective 25mA in the coil.
Dwight
Dwight
I went scrounging a couple of days ago and one of the things that I found
was a HP 19" rack mount unit called a HP 5181A Display/Tape Storage Unit.
I grabbed it without looking too losely. Today I checked it and found that
the RH side of the unit is a HP 9915A computer! The LH side is a HP 1332
X-Y CRT display. No idea what the whole unit is for. Anyone know? I
couldn't find anything on the net about it.
Joe
On Sep 23 2004, 14:22, Paul Koning wrote:
> >>>>> "Pete" == Pete Turnbull <pete(a)dunnington.u-net.com> writes:
> The PDP11 architecture handbook says CIS was an option on the
> Micro/PDP-11, the 11/23-plus, the 11/24, and the 11/44. (Hm, I had
> forgotten about the 11/44...) Micro/PDP-11 seems like another name
> for 11/23. But elsewhere (in the intro) it also shows the LSI11/2 as
> a machine with CIS option. That's the 11/03, I believe.
Yes, the MicroPDP-11 was a specifc range of models of 11/23, 11/73, et
seq in BA23 and BA123 cabinets. The most common 11/03 was an LSI-11/2.
The term LSI-11 refers to either the original set of boards including
the M7264 which could be used to build a system, or more specifically
to the M7264 KD11-F processor card. A PDP-11/03 is, strictly speaking,
a DEC-packaged system, the early ones being an BA11-M box, or an 11V03
system in a BA11-N and with RX01 drives. LSI-11/2 is the later
processor card, used in BA11-N boxes to make some 11V03 and 11T03 (with
RL01 drives) systems.
The reason I asked my question is just that I've never seen or heard of
a CIS option for the 11/03, and I can't think where you'd put it.
There are no spare sockets on the board and not nearly enough of the
internal bus is brought out. Well, there's a spare socket on a basic
M7264 (the original quad board) and on a basic M7270 (the later and
more common LSI-11/2 dual-height board), but they're for the KEV11
(EIS/FIS) option. Most of the 11/03 processors I've seen have the
KEV11 already fitted.
It's also possible to add a Writable Control Store (KUV11) to an 11/03
(M7264) and that can hold user-defined microcode or a version of the
EIS/FIS. AFAIK that only works with an LSI-11 (M7264), not an
LSI-11/2, and anyway it's a quad-height board, not a MICROM chip (it
has a cable that plugs into the socket usually occupied by the KEV11).
I have both the DIGITAL Microcomputer Handbook (1976) that was released
with the LSI-11 series, and the later Microcomputers and Memories
Handbook (1982) which describe the 11/03, and neither mentions CIS,
except for the 11/23-plus (in the 1982 handbook). The 1976 Handbook
describes all the instructions, including the EIS and FIS, but not CIS.
It also describes or lists various languages but not COBOL or DIBOL
(which would have been its raison d'etre).
I've also been told (by someone on the list) that the 11/03 processors
don't have enough microcode address space for CIS, and that fits with
what I know: CIS is BIG -- bigger than the all rest of the instruction
set put together, including the floating point additions, on an 11/23.
So, whilst willing to believe that CIS exists for an 11/03 if someone
has it, I think something else is much more likely :-) Of course, if
it does exist, I'd be very interested to know more about it!
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
>From: "Ed Kelleher" <Pres(a)macro-inc.com>
>
>At 05:49 PM 9/23/2004, you wrote:
>> > >> Once I was given a set of coordinates by Ted, who has been mentioned
>> > >> before in this book. Ted is a rabid UFO fanatic, and liked to sneak
>>UFO
>> > >> targets into our tasking now and then. This was forbidden, but he
>> > >> sometimes did it anyway. I thought that the target on this particular
>> > >> day was an operational target and was not expecting an ET target.
>> > >>
>> > >*cough*hooey!*cough*
>> > >
>> > >g.
>> > >
>> >
>> > Thank you Gene. My sentiments exactly.
>> > Dwight
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>I am glad I wasn't the only one wondering what Sokolov was smoking when he
>>wrote that quote.
>
>I don't know. It could have happened that way.
>
>
>
>Ed K.
>
>:-)
>
>
It could have been a giant elephant sneeze but that is highly
unlikely as well. It has all of the marks of a object that
was loosely held together that was traveling at very high
speed ( not orbital speeds ) that completely disintegrated
in the atmosphere. That would best fit a small comet like
object. The areas effected correlate well with just such
an object. Thye do not correlate with something that blew
up with some internal power source. The results of the
damage do correlate with an object having a large kinetic
energy, transferred to a shock wave in the atmosphere.
Why do we have to find the most unlikely explanation for
it when the likely one fits so well?
Dwight
>From: "Ade Vickers" <avickers(a)solutionengineers.com>
>
>At 22:50 23/09/2004, you wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 11:17 -0700, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
>> > On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Jules Richardson wrote:
>> >
>> > > Apologies if someone's mentioned this one before. Quite possibly the
>> > > coolest gadget I've seen in a long time, though:
>> > >
>> > > http://www.cyberniklas.de/pongmechanik/indexen.html
>> >
>> > Awesome. It would be great to get stuff like this exhibited at the VCF.
>> >
>> > The web page is pretty smart also. What terrific technical and design
>> > work.
>>
>>Amazing, huh? If I read that right, it's 52 relays though (I don't know
>>any German) which makes it sound rather like a 'simple' relay control
>>system rather than an actual relay computer. I fired off an email to
>>them to see if they'll let me have a nose at the wiring diagrams.
>
>I did some back-of-a-fag-packet calculations (i.e. they might be completely
>& utterly wrong, in which case I'd appreciate corrections) on a relay
>computer...
>
>Assume you want a Z80-type CPU. This has ~8k gates. Typically, it seems to
>take 1 relay per input to implement any given gate. Now, I don't know how
>many "x-input" gates there are in a Z80, so I'll assume that - on average -
>it will require 3 relays/gate. Thus, we need ~24,000 relays to implement
>the Z80.
>
>If each relay needs, say, 25mA @ 6v to operate, then the peak current draw
>of our R80 (as I shall call it) could be around 600A (I think). And that's
>before we've added memory, i/o, etc.
>
>As for the heat/noise - well, IMHO it's worth building it just to
>experience that! Mind you, you'll need a lot of room: If you use 30mm by
>13mm relays, then the board space you need is at least 9.36 square
>metres... Still, if you assume that each board needs approx 40mm of space
>incl. airflow room, then you should be able to fit the R80 into 2 400mm by
>400mm by 2000mm cabinets (internal w/d/h)...
>
>The relays I've been looking at typically quote around 25ms to operate
>(either way), so I don't see how you could clock the R80 at anything faster
>than around 40Hz; and you'd probably want to drop to 20Hz to be on the safe
>side. The same relays quote a typical lifetime of 10e7 operations; so at
>20Hz, your R80 should last a little under 139 continuous hours of operation
>before relays started failing...
>
>Creating a screen driver should be interesting....
>
>Question: Wouldn't it be easier to implement an OR gate with no relays at
>all (just two wires joining together)? Or would you need to use the relays
>to keep the output voltage/amperage regulated?
>
>Additional: Hunting around for a suitable CPU to implement in relays, I
>came across the P8 CPU design (http://www.rexfisher.com/P8/P8_TOC.htm).
>This uses a 74LS181 4-bit ALU, which I reckon would require 149 relays to
>replicate. The only thing that confuzzles me is: what use, exactly, is a
>1-input AND? Several of these appear on the 74LS181 schematic...
>
>
>Cheers,
>Ade.
Hi Ade
I think your counts are way off. As I recall, I did a schematic
a while back for a single bit of an alu and it only took about
4 or 5 relays. I did use DC and diodes for steering.
The only thing you need a relay for is to invert. All AND and
OR functions can be done with the contacts of the relays. Even
the diodes are not needed if you have enough contacts.
The life time of the relays are for maximum current conditions.
A relay computer would not be running quite to that level.
Also, relay coils can run at lower currents and voltage once pulled
in. The clocking circuits can be built to provide a pulse of
high voltage to pull the relays in and then a reduced holding
current to maintain.
I still consider building a relay computer as a practical project
but like Karl Zuse, I think that memory is still the biggest issue.
Unlike normal silicon, single relays can be used to buffer both
inverting or non-inverting. This means that a single relay can be
used as a storage element. Silicon requires the use of two inverters
for a static memory.
I've thought about an array of reed switches for memory with
bias magnets. These would be adjusted such that there would
be just enough magentic field to hold the reed closed once closed
but not enough to cause it to close by itself. The coils would
then be used to open and close by applying a counter or aiding
field to the reed/magnet. The magents would be arrange with alternating
directions such that there was no accumulating of the magentic
field across the array of the reed RAM. ROM can be done with
and array of diodes and switches.
I'd keep the ALU simple since most times, it doesn't need to
do arithmatic. A single bit ALU with a few serial storage
shift registers would be sufficient for most math operations.
Dwight
