I have developing somewhat of an interest in Japanese computers lately,
and recently on a.f.c., someone pointed to the museum at:
http://www.ipsj.or.jp/katsudou/museum/
Great pictures!
I noticed that some of the pictures appear to be of survivors - old
machines from the 60s and 70s that are still around. Does anyone, perhaps
a Japanese list member (are there any?) know anything about the computer
museum scene in Japan?
William Donzelli
aw288 at osfn.org
>
>Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update
> From: woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca>
> Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 15:10:44 -0600
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>Michael Sokolov wrote:
>
>>Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>If PC-based emulators are fast enough, why bother with the IC version?
>>>
>>>
>>
>>1. I don't want an emulator, I want The Real Thing (tm).
>>
>>2. A pee sea based emulator requires a pee sea. I refuse to contaminate
>>my house with a pee sea.
>>
>>
>FPGA software requires a pee sea sadly enough. I suspect a 8080 could do
>PCB or CUSTOM
>IC design if you could use a programable character set on a terminal.
>When you think about it
>it is the hidden documentaion in closed hardware that is the problem. I
>open source FPGA
>could be done as a custom chip but getting around the hardware patents
>is the problem..
An 8080 could not do it and graphics has little to do with it.
FPGA P&R is a really large array problem that eats memory and cpu.
The PC is a common choice as it's become fast enough and common
as houseflies. After PCs what s the next most common hardware?
A vendor of hardware (FPGAs) really only provides software so they
can sell the part, I doubt that software is a money maker for them.
So with that in minds if you not running a PC then likely the
alternate hardware is from the small list:
VAX or Alpha running UNIX
AS400?
Something PowerPC based?
SUN?
What else is out there that's not wintel, fast enough and can address
a large memory that runs a fairly current UNIX. That also assumes
the software that can P&R the FPGA is available as source.
Allison
> > By that period, HP comptuers were 'repaired' by board-swapping. If you're
> > lucky there will be _some_ useful info in the boardswapper guide, like
> > pinouts or testpoints.
> You are too pessimistic :-) I hope to find good documentation of
> everything I need.
Optimism is important, but unfortunately in the past, losts of machines came up but no reasonable service documentation
are at least without full schematics published.
Or they were never published later on, as companys were in business to shortly.
ONYX and Plessey come directly to my mind.
I've never seen documents of Emulex boards as well.
Maybe somebody can correct me, that would be nice to hear.
Pierre
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XXL-Speicher, PC-Virenschutz, Spartarife & mehr: Nur im WEB.DE Club!
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>
>Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update
> From: William Donzelli <aw288 at osfn.org>
> Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:38:47 -0500 (EST)
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
I posted that the EGO homebuilt comnputer was in 1985 and there
was another article on the TOY.
Well I found it. BYTE January 1987, Phil Koopman Microcoded vs Hardwired Control
The deisgn is a 16bit fairly minimal machine that could actually run real code
if built. The article does not fully discuss the the total machine but the control
logic is covered. The rest is almost obvious. Likely chip count for the entire
machine could be under 60 TTL peices if octal latches and Tristate gates plus the
74181s were used. If GALs were used the likely chip count could be smaller.
TOY itself was 16 bits, 4 bit instruction and 12 bit address, Single accumulator.
The ALU was 74181 so the basic arithmetic and logical instructions are native to
that chip and the remainder are jmpz (jump if zero) and load (put value in Acc)
and Store (save Acc at location). Oddly enough 4 no-ops, so theres room for
instruction set improvement.
A machine like this goes far to demystify how computers work.
An aside to all this is one of the annoying things when I was studying
computers early one (3++ decades ago) was "computer books" would endlessly
detail logic at the gate and flipflop level. Maybe discuss arithmetic and
sequential logic. They never quite cross the line to how these blocks form
computers. It wasn't until the PDP-8 handbooks that there was a connection
of the ideas of sequential logic controlling arithmetic and logical blocks.
Allison
> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Donzelli [mailto:aw288 at osfn.org]
> Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2005 10:02 AM
> Forwarded:
>
> > From: William Donzelli [mailto:aw288 at osfn.org]
> > Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 8:01 AM
> > To: Don Reaves W5OR
> > Subject: RE: National SW-54 bites the big one
> >
> > > What should I do with my PDP-11/24, PDP-11/03-L, and RL02 bits?
> > > Send me a buyer/trader as I need to get them off my carport
> > before winter.
> > > No racks, no interconnect cables, just the units as they
> > were removed from
> > > the rack years ago.
> > >
> > > If I must I'll put them on 'bay, as a precursor to carting
> > them to the
> > > smelter.
> >
> > Can I post this to another list?
>
>
>
Who has it? Where in Arkansas? Based on the call sign, I'd guess it was Don
Reaves in Little Rock, but I'd like to verify before contacting him.
Kelly
Yes, the diagnostics disks are used for CMOS setup on the AT. 'DEBUG'
>from DOS can also be used, but that's a little too (warning - bad pun
alert .. ) hard core for me.
The Advanced Diagnostics that I mentioned is for the PC and XT, and came
with the hardware maintenance and service manual. It has the low level
format routine for the 10MB XT hard disk, which is useful if your
controller doesn't have an onboard routine to do it. (I'm not sure
which ones do and don't.)
The regular Diagnostics disk are for the PC and XT, and are also a good
test of clone compatibility. Do not run them on a PCjr. :-)
Mike
I wasn't able to get Jim version 2.02, but 2.05 was close enough.
I have images of the following if anybody needs them:
Diagnostics 2.05
Diagnostics 2.23
Advanced Diagnostics 2.20
Diagnostics PC AT 1.00
Diagnostics PC AT 1.02
Diagnostics PC AT 2.06
As an IBM employee I feel responsible for keeping these old machines
running. ;-)
Mike
Hi All,
I wonder if anyone here could help us. We have an analog computer in our
collection that was built by LAN-Electronics in England in the mid-1960's.
It has a number of unusual features including a phone dial on the front of each
of the patchboards (for data entry?) and some very small inputs for the
patchcords (the patchcords for the PACE TR-10 or TR-20 are way too big). Anyone
have any information on this or any ideas about the computer? We'd appreciate
the help. You can find pics of it at www.earlycomputers.com.
thanks,
Michael
Hi, Don,
Thank you! The alternative address path you provided worked just fine.
I apologize for an erroneous initial assumption that GoDaddy's DNS was screwed up. My new conclusion is that my browser is not understanding the redirection you mention. Good thing I didn't fill out a trouble ticket just yet. ;-)
Thanks again.
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 06-Nov-05 at 00:11 Don North wrote:
>Bruce, are you still seeing this problem? If so, what browser/OS are you
>using?
>I've used Firefox, Netscape8, IE6 on WinXP and Win2K, and Safari on the
>Mac.
>
>The background is that www.ak6dn.com is not a top level website, but hosted
>in a subdirectory (ie, www.ak6dn.com/blah... =>
>www.slowdeath.com/AK6DN/blah...).
>References to www.ak6dn.com are redirected via an HTTP 'Location: ...'
>directive.
>If your browser does not grok this it could be an issue.
>
>If you are still having problems, you can get there by the alternate
>path using:
> http://www.slowdeath.com/AK6DN/PDP-11/M9312/
>instead. As you note going direct to http://www.slowdeath.com is another
>beast altogether...
>
>Don
>
>Bruce Lane wrote:
>
>>Hi, Don,
>>
>>*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
>>
>>On 04-Nov-05 at 00:33 Don North wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>I've posted a web page <http://www.AK6DN.com/PDP-11/M9312/> that has
>>>M9312 PROM images in Intel HEX format as well as commented source and
>>>assembly listings of all the well-known devices, both boot and console.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> <snippety>
>>
>> I tried to get to these this evening. Your web site address seems to be
>rerouting to something called 'slowdeath.com,' and is demanding a password
>to get any farther than the front page.
>>
>> Please advise. Thanks much.
>>
>>
>>-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>>Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy,
>>Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com
>>kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m
>>"If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with
>surreal ports?"
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy,
Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com
kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m
"If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?"
