I've purchased a memory board for PDP11.
It appears to be a National Semiconductor Q-BUS memory card.
It has 980110014-001 on it. I find (currently) no markings saying
like NS23D, NS23M, NS23S, NS23E, etc....
It is populated with MMC3764N-15 chips. There are 144 chips
total.
I'm still a newbie on 11s... but, if my internet searches are correct
those chips are 64k x 1 ram modules. So it takes 8 of them to make
64 kilobytes. Assuming there is parity, 144/9 make 16 sets of 9
chips each with 64 kilobytes + 1 parity bit per byte (9th chip).
This math makes it out to me a 1MB module.
Can anyone confirm that is what it is ? I bought it as a 4MB module.
Also, I believe this came out of an 11/73. Will this work in an 11/83,
and if so, does it operate as PMI memory ?
Thanks in advance from all you PDP11 gurus out there.
And... if this isn't PMI memory, and if is only a 1MB board, would
anyone want to take in in trade towards a M8637-EF (MSV11-JE)
to go along with the existing MSV11-JE I have.
-- Curt
Doc wrote
> IBM's idea of a hobbyist license is $15,000 a shot.
Just out of curiosity, how does one generally learn these business
systems?
For MVS we have Hercules, for VMS there's the hobbyist program (and
either cheap VAXen/Alphas or emulators), but for MPE/iX and
i5/OS-OS/400 there's nothing. Is it similar to accordion repair where 2
schools turn out our entire national supply? Or do businesses keep a
couple of old machines in the back for people to learn on?
The stuff below just arrived today. The items marked with "*" I am keeping,
the rest is available if anyone wants them.
* Unopened box syncom platinum soft sector 8" diskettes (10)
"Box" style binder "MicroPDP-11 Hardware Information" (2 manuals, Owners
manual and Technical manual). Appears to be for BA123 type systems.
* BA11-K mounting box users manual
* DZ11 asynchronous multiplexor technical manual
* Microsystems CP/M Programmers (quick) reference guide
* TRS-80 Computer Reference Handbook (basic & command ref. for I, II, II, 4,
100, MC-10 and coco)
RT-11 pocket guide
* RSX11-M mini reference
RT11 mini reference manual
PDP11 processor handbook (pdp11 04/24/34a/44/70 1981)
IMS International Ultima Series video display terminal user manual (2
copies)
IMS International Ultima Series ultima II video display terminal user manual
Digital Research Inc. CP/M "R" 2.2 Update (setup disk, and disk's 1,2,3
{5.25, soft sector})
A box containing a large number of DEC ribbon cables, most of which I don't
know what they are for. There is one BC11A-10 that I will probably keep.
If anyone wants the items not marked "*", let me know. Total cost (including
shipping) is 1.25 times actual shipping costs.
Jay West
Hi,
Time to introduce myself. My name is Lars Hamr?n, and I live in
Sweden. My very first computer was a 16-bit Computer Automation Alpha
LSI-2, that at first I programmed in Basic, and them in assembly.
Some time ago I decided that, for sentimental reasons, I wanted an
LSI-2, but soon discovered that CA was virtually forgotten and that
very little remained. My scope was therefore expanded to try to
collect and save as my of CA:s computer side as possible. (CA also
made automatid test equipment).
With a little luck, a lot of e-mails and phone calls, and a lot of
help from other people, some of whom are active on this list (thank
you!), I have been able to collect more than I initially hoped for,
but a lot is of course still missing.
There is a web site dedicated to the project at
http://www.sdu.se/computer-automation-museum/
It details parts of the collection.
I would very much like to get in contact with anyone who has
information on these machines, or who has first-, second- third- or
eve fourth-hand experience with these machines, or may know of someone
who has.
They are really becoming very rare, so *ANY* help and information is
likely to be of value.
Kind regards
/Lars Hamr?n
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Lars Hamr?n Tel...: +46( 46)189090
Svensk Datorutveckling Mobile: +46(705)189090
Vadm?llan 211 e-mail: hamren at sdu.se
S-225 94 Lund WWW...: www.sdu.se
Sweden
Several people have been talking about modems and the like, and even acoustic
couplers. Here are some points:
The 103 Modem frequencies are:
1070/1270 and 2025/2225 ('mark' is the higher frequency).
One group is used in each direction. As I remember it the high group was used
as transmit on the answer side, as the "answer tone" (one of the high
frequencies) was one that tripped the echo suppressors to "off" so they
wouldn't interfere with the transmission of the data. The 103 modem has a 200
Hz shift (difference between mark and space) and doesn't like much above twice
the shift frequency in data rate (that is why things changed after 300 bps).
Some people were lucky (real lucky if you ask me) to get 450 bps out of the
thing.
Acoustic couplers go WAY back. In the 60's (some might think this is ancient
history) it wasn't good to attach things directly to the phone line (people did
it any way, but I digress). So, many schemes were used to couple things to the
phone line. One of the most successful vendors was Anderson Jacobson.
Tymshare (yeah, the guys with the SDS 940's) also developed a coupler. Their
original one used magnetic coupling for the receive side as is was less prone
to noise. Since you had the coupler near the ASR-33 you can imagine the noise.
Magnetic coupling is still used in "hearing aid compatible" telephones (you
will see it on pay phones with blue strain reliefs on the handset cord).
At higher speeds several standards abounded. Bell "202" modems used a single
FSK carrier with a wide shift to accommodate 1200 bps in ONE direction. The
standard (Bell Standard) provided for a 5 bps back channel (so you could tell
the other guy to "turn the line around"). Others expanded on the back channel
to make it an FSK pair (around 300 Hz as I remember) that would about 150 bps.
If you were using a CRT terminal, this was OK since you could hardly type that
fast, and having the (big computer like pdp-10, or others) respond back at 1200
bps seemed like lightening fast.
The next standard (The phone company was allowing direct connections by then)
was 1200 full duplex. The first one was Vadic 3400, followed by Bell 212.
While similar, they had opposite answer/originate pairs and were not
compatible. These modems took in the 1200 async data and converted it to a
synchronous stream that was sent over the carrier. What was nice is that if
you used the modem and connected to a "low speed" (Bell 103 type) modem, it
used those frequencies (like a second modem).
Later developments raised the speed up to 33k bps full duplex using lots of
computing power in the modem (which got cheaper to do). with various "V.xxx"
standards. All of this finished up with 56k modems which was the limit for a
DS0 channel (8 bits, less one for signalling and 8k samples per second).
Just remember, programming on an ASR33 is a VERY humbling experience. Everyone
should try it for one project just to get it. Unfortunately, comments get
sacrificed but you do make up for it in the scribbles on the real paper.
--
Tom Watson
tsw at johana.com
____________________________________________________________________________________
Get your own web address.
Have a HUGE year through Yahoo! Small Business.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL
Hi Ethan,
did you manage to find the power supply info you requested for the Panoview
630, as I have just aquired one but without the power supply.
Ray
Some pictures of my Dulmont Magnum are available at
http://www.taswegian.com/dulmont.zip (about 18MB download). There don't
seem to be too many pictures of this around, so thought I'd post these for
those interested.
Cheers
A
I have a friend who has an older AS/400 in his personal collection of
computers. (It is in the collection because the AS/400 is unique enough
to be interesting.) He doesn't know a lot about it but he did manage to
get a console, wire it correctly, and get to the OS/400 command line.
To do anything remotely interesting with the machine he needs to have a
development environment. I am figuring green screen COBOL, C and RPG
are good enough. Does anybody know how to engage IBM to find out if
license keys are available for home/hobbyist use? (Other manufacturers
like DEC did this for their 'bigger' iron.)
Mike
PS: I work for IBM and I have code in every release of the AS/400 from
V3R6 on up, and even I don't know where to go for this one ...
In what is the longest time *I* am aware of between Version 1.0 and
Version 2.0 of a program (1979-2007), I'm happy to announce an updated
version (2.0) of Adventure for your OS/8 system.
(OK, I could have delayed this a couple of years and made it 30 years
between releases..)
Thanks to a list member that supplied me with the DECUS sources and Bob
Supnik's RT-11 Adventure source, as well as a few helpful OS/8 FORTRAN
libraries on the Internet, I've managed to not only recover the program
source, but also make several improvements in the way it works.
Unfortunately, it's still a memory hog that needs 32KW to run.
I'm making source and binary floppies in SIMH-format, a zip file with
all sources, and a web page with the individual source files available.
http://www.rickmurphy.net/adventure.html has pointers to the SIMH
floppy images, sources, etc.
Happy exploring!
-Rick
Hey, that thing is hard to get to! Someone tightened down the screws in the
back that hold the regulator in place, so after undoing the two screws in
front it still won't slide out. Is there a trick to this? Do I have to take
the whole supply out? Can't get a screw driver in there with the upper H742
in place :\
Suggestions appreciated :)
Jay
