test-drb March 2007

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PDP-11/40 videos

by wacarder＠earthlink.net

> >Please not WMV. Please please please. > I won't do WMV!!! What do you prefer? Ashley

18 years, 1 month

Old terminal and some AES stuff.

by jrr＠flippers.com

I have two items here for free (you pick up) or the cost of shipping and handling/packing up. ADM-31 Terminal and User Reference Manual AES: Word Processing #103-2004-02 (2 floppies) and some other discs that I intend to wipe as they have "sermons &..." penciled on the covers (1983ish). BASE2, Inc Model 800 Printer Operators reference Manual (only) AES training for using the Word Processing program (looks like) - a bunch of single sided pages... John :-#)# PS - forgot to add signature with address - sigh! -- John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9 Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, VideoGames) www.flippers.com "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out"

18 years, 1 month

Xerox 850 / 860 hardware differences

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Out of interest, does anyone know how much hardware commonality there is between the Xerox 850 and 860? We've got an absolutely beautiful 860 at the museum, with all the trimmings documentation and software-wise. We've just been offered an unknown-working-status 850 main unit though, and I'm not sure what's best in terms of fate: a) Pass on it and offer it here in the hope that someone can use it [1], b) Pull boards, PSU, drives etc. as source of spares if they're transferrable to the 860, c) Just consign it to landfill [2]. [1] There's no keyboard, no display, and no printer. I'm not sure what chance someone would have of simulating those with modern hardware, even assuming that the main unit is working / can be made to work. [2] The drives are doubtless useful to *someone* for non-Xerox things I would have thought. It's in Welwyn, UK. Shouts of "I'm close to there and desperately need an 850 base unit to go with my 850 peripherals" will of course be gratefully received :-) I'd much rather a complete system be restored than a partial system be stripped for spares! [I don't actually know yet that the current owner's happily to release it to anyone other than the museum, though - but can find out if needed] cheers Jules

18 years, 1 month

baud modifier

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 01:17:07 +0000 From: Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> Subject: Re: baud modifier >On 11/03/2007 09:53, David Griffith wrote: >> I'm thinking of a device that would step down the speed of an rs232 >> connection from, say, 9600 to 110. The idea is to allow a computer that >> can't do 110 to talk to an ASR33 teletype. Does such a device exist? >> What's it really called? Does anyone have any schematics for one? >I have a device called a MicroFazer that will do this. It was actually >sold as a printer buffer, but it has serial as well as parallel input, >and serial and parallel output, with several hundred K of buffer in >between. >-- >Pete =================================== I have a few of these as well (in case anybody wants one), but mine do NOT do 110 baud (150 minimum); are you sure yours does? Also AFAIK they were all unidirectional (except for XON/XOFF of course). Mine are serial to serial, 150 to 19200bd, 64K buffer BTW. mike

18 years, 1 month

Xebec Winchester controller

by aek＠bitsavers.org

What I have are the docs for the MSC-9305 ST506-GPIB interface which used the Xebec module. At one point it looked like the commands were compatible. http://bitsavers.org/pdf/msc/MSC-9305_ST506-GPIB_1980.pdf

18 years, 1 month

Report on vintage "Programmer Electronnic Control" alias "RAF Tornado Computer"

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

I showed the pictures to someone who worked on Tornado at Marconi Avionics. He said the box is definitely not part of either the CSAS (Command Stability Augmentation System) nor AFDS (AutoPilot & Flight Director System). He thought it was physically much too big for the HUD (Head Up Display). Roger Holmes.

18 years, 1 month

Report on vintage "Programmer Electronnic Control" alias "RAF Tornado Computer"

by erik＠baigar.de

Hi Roger, thank you for your detailed information. By accident I nearly missed your email since I was not listed to the cctalk mailing list. But this is solved now ;-) I will comment some points of your email now and hopefully I will find the time next week to investigate your other suggestions and hints on the machine. I will give an update next weekend. > > not know how long development of such an aircraft takes but > > the first take-off was in 1974 I think, so this would match > > the design of this box wuite well - what do you think? > Aircraft development takes a long long time. To make it worthwhile > the aircraft has a long service life. Whilst the computers are bullet > proof in an office/home, the temperature extremes, vibration, high G > forces etc in service means that many failures occur and PCBs could > be replaced many times over the years, so do not pay too much notice > of the dates on components of the boards currently installed. OK, I understand this. I do not know much about these issues, but on the internet often the COTS strategy is mentioned and in using standard components, I think moderen aircraft swap technology more often than was done in the 60s and 70s, right? > There were at least four 12 bit versions, and one 13 bit apparently. > Then 12 bit models were the 902, 102C, ARCH 105 and Minim or 12/12. Thank you - I will try to find information on the web in the next days. Compared to the Elliott machines the DECs are very common stuff ;-) > > Yes, that matches - the core memory module already has the > > label GEC. So this is (as I suspected) older than the CPU and > > taken maybe from a different design?! > You have it the wrong way around. The GEC name replaced the Marconi > name, which had earlier replaced Elliott. Core memory was very Thank you for this hint. I checked wikipedia and obviously GEC got involved very early and the name was changed to GEC later (1984). Sorry for my misunderstanding, now I got it. > convenient for military applications and was in use long after it was > replaced in commercial applications. Think of a missile or torpedo > held in stock for many years, stick a power plug into it and program > the target, pull out the plug and then launch it. Only then does the > internal power supply come up, the processor boots up and does its > thing. The internet claimes sometimes, that core memory is less sensitive to radiation, too. This might have been an advantage in certain military applications (really bad applications, honestly speaking). Data retenttion of the core memory should be quite good, but since reading is always destructive, there is the rist, that bad data gets written back. In the case of Programmer Electronic Control, they did quite a lot to adjust the core memory's dirver current automatically according to a temerature measurement of the core. As my experiments show, you have to reduce the current if temperatuere goes up. This physically understandable (1/T). > >> bit 920s before moving on to the Zilog Z8001. > > Hey, than you are a valuable expert on these - do you have > > got any source of intormation about the 920s? > Not directly but I may be able to help. Hey, that is even better. I highly appreciate, that you spend time in sharing your information! Thanks a lot in advance! > > > >> 9 Jump if negative > > RIGHT - all three jumps are relative ones > On the 18 bit machines these were relative to the start of the 8k > memory module the instruction was in. An interesting modification. In my case they are relative and you can jump +/-127 words (crossing any border). Here again, the box uses 1complement and thus jump 0x00 is the same as jump 0x80: An infinite loop! > >> 11 Store program counter (for function return) > > SIMILAR - This stores PC and then does a > > table jump > On the 18 bit machines, it actually stored the program counter + 1 > and the following instruction was either an 8 or a "/8", i.e. 24. Hmm, I do not understand fully what you mean by "the following instruction was either an 8 or a "/8", i.e. 24". The Programmer Electronic Control (Let's call it PEC in the future) stores PC+1 (as your 18bit) to the specified location into core. The new address is taken from the position in memory where the index register points to. So in my case this is a perfect table jump. > >> 12 Multiply > > RIGHT, unsigned multiplication > This should multiply the signed accumulator and the signed memory > operand giving a double length result in the A and Q registers. Results are as you mention, but if either operand is negative, the result contains wrong values. But maybe I check whether this depends on the content of the index register prior to the operation... > >> 13 Divide > > HMMM, the command takes very long but the results are > > very strange. I thought it might be some type of > > random number generation by an irreducible polynomal, > > but it is definitively not Divide. Maybe here is something > > different or wrong with the microcode. > This divides a signed DOUBLE LENGTH number in the A and Q registers > by a signed memory operand. IIRC the A register gets the result and > the Q register the remainder. OK, I will verify this in the coming days. Now I know what to look form but according to my records the results of this command always have been junk. > >> 14 Shift > > In PART: Here exist many subgroups of commands including > > shift left/right. Also the Q as you call it can be transferred > > to Accu and vice versa. There als is a MTA (MoveToAccu as I call it) > > which is a two-word instruction (most others are one-word) and > > transfers the word following this command into Accu. About > > 16 bit patterns have (at least to me now) the same meaning in > > this segment. > Shifting by the entire word length does transfer Q to A or A to Q Right. But here again, the bit 11 is the sign bit and thus the shift does not affect the bit 11 of the destination. I.e. bit 0 of A is moved to bit 10 of Q in shifting right for example. > (but the data disappears from the source). A load immediate > instruction would have been very handy. Yes, the load immediate is really nice. A block move does not exist on PEC. Essentially the immediate "MTA - Move To Accu" is one of two "two-read-cycles" instructions. Up to now I did not fugire out, what the other instruction does with the data read. Do you remember any "two-read" instructions in the Elliotts? > orders were encoded in the 14 order on the 12 bit machines with only > 256 numbers available compared with 8k on the 18 bitters. Yes, this seems to be absolutely correct! > >> 15 Input/Output and special (like interrupt return) > >> 16 to 31, as above but indexed by B register. > > > > NOPE - The box is 12-bit and does not have got this block. > > EVERYTHING is done via the index register I as I called it. > > Do you mean you cannot turn the B-register modification off? Correct: Everything is modified by the index register. Exceptions are the jumps, MTA for example. > Does it get cleared automatically somehow? You are clever - that is exactly what appens: Every instruction which is affected by this register (ADD, SUB, LDA, STA, ...) clear the register. So you have to load it right before each instruction. A severe constraint in my opinion is, that the index register can only be loaded from words 0-127 in the lower 4k. So this might be a bottleneck in memory since the table jump (I called it IDXCALL since it used the index register to get ne new address from) requires memory for each routine called, too. > > perhaps studying the Elliot would help to solve the remaining > > problems??!?!?!! > I am willing to try. Great! T H A N K S a L O T! > By the way, there are two 't's in Elliott. Thanks - is stored into my brain now ;-) > >> bootstrap, in later versions, this was just copied into core when the > >> machine was initialised. > > Interesting. The Programmer Electronic Control starts execution > > at 0x0a0 after reset. > Could it be that there is a value of 0x0A0 at location 0? No, if the machine is held in reset state, the PC is forced to 0x0a0 since the reset line is connected to the Set/Clear pins of the flip-flops making the program counter. Immediately after reset is set high, the first word is read and executed >from this address. > > But of course the application was different > > and the operation software was completely loaded via the big plug > > boefore operation. > I suspect the big plug is for the OMP (Operator's Monitor Panel), and Some kind of blinking-light console? Something like this exists for the Rolm 1666b, too. This would be cool to have! ;-) > yes the program would be loaded via this once, probably in the > factory or at a maintenance depot, and the machine would probably be > rebooted many times afterwards. If data gets corrupted, than the complete aircraft has to return to a maintenance depot for reprogramming the machine? So if there are 10 or 20 of these boxes in one aircraft, they need service quite often I think. Roger, how was your experience - was this reliable with the Elliotts or did you have to reporgram the pater tape loader quite often? In my case, the transputer setup generates some spikes doring it bootup. If PEC is already turned on, this corrupts the data in core memory. So I always do a memory-test on PEC after turn on (to adjust the core driver current) and than freshly program my test routines. > The 920 was unusual in that it booted into the highest level > interrupt, level 1, so no interrupts will be serviced until you go > down an interrupt level or two or three. So 15 7168 increases the interrupt level and after executing this once, the interrupt 1 can be serviced, right? What happens in the Elliott, if an interrupt occurs? Is there a jump to a certain address in core or is the new program counter itself read from core? I have to think how to figure this out for PEC.... Of course I have to apply signals to all possible interrupt sources, load a program trying the yet unknown instructions and watch wheter any irregularities or jumps occur. I will have to trap PEC if the idle-loop is left. This is a bigger project and I will need some weeks to check this. > The 15 order is coded thus: > > 15 0 to 2047 Input > 15 2048 Shift A register left 7 places and OR in a character from the > paper tape reader (via OMP) > 15 2052 (IIRC) Wait until character pressed on teletype and read into > A register (via OMP) > 15 4096 to 6143 Output > 15 6144 Output character to paper tape punch (via OMP) > 15 6148 Output character to teletype (via OMP) if I remember > correctly > 15 7168 Terminate current program level i.e. return from interrupt > 15 7169 Test if standardised IIRC, skip the next instruction if the > accumulator is zero or top two bits are different > 15 7170 Increment B and skip the next instruction if bottom 13 bits > are zero > 15 7171 Read the value of the control keys on the OMP > 15 7172 Move l.s. 17 bits of A to the m.s. 17 bits of Q. Bottom bit > of Q is zeroed > 15 7173 Move m.s. 17 bits of Q to l.s. 17 bits of A. Top bit of A is > zeroed > 15 7174 Move A to B > 15 7175 Move B to A > 15 7176 Set relative addressing mode > 15 7177 Set absolute addressing mode Thank you very much for this list. This gives me valuable hints and ideas what to try out next. BTW: Have there been timers on the Elliotts you know about? Since you are such an expert I am sure you have a nice collection of vintage hardware, right? Perhaps you even have got an Elliott up and running? Thanks again, best regards, Erik.

18 years, 1 month

Turning a VAX 11/750 into a workstation (Re: VMS for MicroVAX II/III (was Re: Value of a PDP/8?))

by pechter＠gmail.com

Nope... I did the install on the hardware in my DEC Field Service days... It was a VS11/VSV11 subsystem. Had a raster graphics box hung off an interface on the Unibus. Perhaps it was a CSS (special systems) item. The box was at Fort Monmouth in Central New Jersey. There were diags and manuals in the Fiche under that name. Bill On 3/11/07, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > > At 10:37 PM -0500 3/10/07, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >Bill Pechter wrote: > >>The DEC VS11/VSV11 kind of did the earliest "Vax workstation." > >> > >>It was a Qbus graphics subsystem with 20 inch monitor which hooked up to > a > >>Unibus interface. > > > >I'm reasonably certain there was an earlier workstation > >configuration for VAXen. I think the earliest was a UNIBUS-attached > >graphical console for the VAX 11/780. > > > >Peace... Sridhar > > I believe you're thinking of the VAXstation 100 terminal (aka VS100). > > Zane > > > -- > | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | > | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | > | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | > +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ > | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | > | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | > | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | >

18 years, 2 months

PDP-11/40 videos

by wacarder＠earthlink.net

I just looked at my message in "digest mode", and the word wrapping was bad, so I am reposting. I've been out in my shop this morning getting some VT52 DecScopes out of the back corner to prep them for shipping. I decided to boot up the old Wofford Witch PDP-11/40, since it has not been booted since November. While it's up and running, I think I am going to set up my camcorder and take some videos of the front panel as the lights blink, the LA120 Decwriter III console during the RSTS/E V7 startup process, the ASR-33 teletype as it clanks away running SYSTAT, the VT05 terminal during a video display, as well as the LA36, VT52, RL02, RK05, etc. I will hopefully find time to put these videos on my web site http://www.woffordwitch.com later today. I will show how to load an RL02 pack, an RK05 pack, etc. Is there anything in particular anyone is interested in while I am making videos? Hopefully someone will find these little video clips interesting or useful. I know that there have been times in the past where somebody would acquire an RL02 drive or RK05 drive and wish that someone could show them how to load a disk pack properly. Let me know if there is anything else that might be of interest while I have a few minutes and am not being summoned by "she who must be obeyed". :-) Ashley http://www.woffordwitch.com

18 years, 2 months

PDP-11/40 videos

by tpeters＠mixcom.com

At 11:25 AM 3/11/2007 -0500, you wrote: >I just looked at my message in "digest mode", and >the word wrapping was bad, so I am reposting. > >I've been out in my shop this morning getting Um, no, actually the other message was preferable, this one is wrapped to a little tiny fraction of the width. I'd like to see the blinkenlights on the front panel. -T ----- 106. [Computing] B can be thought of as C without types; more accurately, it is BCPL squeezed into 8K bytes of memory and filtered through Thompson's brain. --Dennis Ritchie --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB: http://www.mixweb.com/tpeters 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531

18 years, 2 months

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test-drb March 2007