They are on the web if you look hard enough.
Unfortunatley the whole collection is a mess. They should have distributed
it in PDFs of the original pages to maintain the feeling of the originals.
But NO, they html the whole thing poorly, and the original art is low res
too.
I am fortunate to have the university nearby, and there is nothing like
flipping through old SciAm binders. The computer ads from the 50s-60s are
incredible.
where's my flying car?
I want the future as depicted in the magazine.
If you can have access to these, also notice the employment ads. Everybody
was in the exciting field of computers, a rocket scientist, or electronics
engineer.
Dont forget to check out the Amateur Scientist book too. There is a relay
based tic-tac toe machine, farmer fox, goose computer too. It is a
collection of some of the best articles.
In the magazine, Marvin Gardner's Mathematical puzzles column too! lots of
binary and computer algorithms foretelling the future are in there.
I grew up in the NASA environment. As A kid I got to go in the clean rooms
and see the spacecraft. Then they brought me into the computer room to play
tic tac-toe at the console.
I want to go back...
Or surround my basement with vaccum column tape drives and a console of
switches and blinkinlights. Nevermind its a PC runing the show, but its
running a s/360 emulator..
Grab your pocket protectors and slide rules, come over to my house!
Randy
>From: Bob Rosenbloom <bobalan at sbcglobal.net>
>Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic
>Posts"<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
><cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>Subject: Re: raster laser? - Ameteur Scientist
>Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 05:12:33 -0800
>
>
>
>Dave McGuire wrote:
>>>
>>>Does anyone on the list have this collection (SciAm Amateur Scientist
>>>columns on CD-ROM)?
>>
>> I have them...I ordered them the day they were announced.
>>
>> -Dave
>>
>>--Dave McGuire
>>Port Charlotte, FL
>>
>They are available on ePay for $24.00
>
>Bob
_________________________________________________________________
Find what you need at prices you?ll love. Compare products and save at MSN?
Shopping.
http://shopping.msn.com/default/shp/?ptnrid=37,ptnrdata=24102&tcode=T001MSN…
On 3/10/07, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ethan Dicks wrote:
> >> > I think a 11/750 makes a fine single-user VMS "workstation" ;-)
> >>
> >> Never trust a workstation that couldn't roll over you and smash you flat?
> >
> > I almost had an 11/750 land on me, but I was able to coax it out of
> > the side door of a Chevy Astro mini-Van (alone) without getting
> > squished or pinched. That was a fun experience.
>
> I once (with the help of a bunch of other people) was attempting to
> unload a DECsystem 5810...
> It landed on me as I was kneeling down. I caught it.
I think I've heard people reference this incident on the list. I
didn't know it was quite as spectactular as all of that - sounds like
a combination of luck and quick action on the part of all present.
> > Thinking about the whole "11/750 workstation" concept - I wonder if
> > one could take a qbus mono framebuffer and hang it off of some flavor
> > of Qniverter?
> I once asked a question as to whether it would be possible to build a
> VAX 6000-based workstation by hanging a Qbus framebuffer from a Unibux
> slot hooked to a VAXBI bridge in a VAXBI slot in a secondary BI cage
> hooked to a VAX 6000 through an XMI->VAXBI bridge. The consensus was
> that it probably wouldn't work. 8-)
Hmm... I have an 8300 in the basement with a non-working DWBUA (it
used to work, about 13 years ago but that was before the machine got
moved). My recollection of it was that (when it was working), the
DWBUA was ok in a native VAXBI environment like the 82xx/83xx, but
that when you started stacking bus converter on bus converter, it
didn't take much to get things to the point of violating timing
maximums on certain things. We had a problem with a Qbus COMBOARD
being stuck in the same Qbus as a TLZ04 controller on an early model
VAX 4000 since the CPU bus _wasn't_ Qbus, and there were enough subtle
changes that hardware bus timeouts came into play, especially when the
TLZ04 controller "went away" for a bit - I think officially, the
timeouts were too stringent, but had never been a problem up to that
model of VAX.
I have to seriously wonder if you could get traffic from the Qbus,
over the Q/Univerter, over the DWBUA over the XMI-BI bridge (forget
the model #) before something timed out somewhere.
No reason not to attempt it, but if it doesn't work the first time,
the chain might just be too much to handle.
-ethan
P.S. - the problem I'm now having with my DWBUA might be a wonky UET
(Unibus Exerciser/Terminator). The UET has to work perfectly and
respond correctly when the DWBUA talks to it, or the DWBUA fails
self-test. Could be cables, could be bad components, or could just be
the phase of the moon. Either way, I installed a DWBUA correctly
once, and now it appears to have been a fluke. It hasn't worked right
since I moved it. :-( I have the docs, and according to the various
device status registers, it acts like the DWBUA isn't seeing the right
things from the UET. *slaps forehead* I have just the thing to check
it out - a not-yet-assembled bare-board UA-11. I think assembling
that just moved up the priority chain to sometime in the first 1/2 of
this year!
Erik Baigar <erik at baigar.de> wrote:
> Beginning of 2005 I got this small airborne computer via eBay and
> I bought it mainly because of the 96k of core memory inside. Those
> days some of these have been sold by ABEX (...)
(Not directly related to your current project, but I immediately thought of it when I read "Tornado" - because I saw the Moving Map Display there - and noticed you're also from Germany)
I assume you're aware of the massive amounts of aeronautic, military and electronic stuff
www.helmut-singer.de
(in or near Aachen) has to offer?
Yours sincerely,
--
Arno Kletzander
Stud. Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen
www.iser.uni-erlangen.de
"Feel free" - 10 GB Mailbox, 100 FreeSMS/Monat ...
Jetzt GMX TopMail testen: www.gmx.net/de/go/mailfooter/topmail-out
Erik, well done with the reverse engineering.
I read your description of this computer with a strange feeling. I
did not recognise it having 12 bits but everything else seemed very
reminiscent of the Elliott 920 series.
Then I looked at the pictures, and saw it was made by my old
employers, Marconi Avionics who took over Elliott Brothers, and
continued to make 920 series machines. I think there were 12 bit
versions made by one of the divisions, though I am surprised they
were still making them in the 1980s.
One part of Elliott Brothers became GEC Computers (based in
Borehamwood).
One of your labels is from Airborne Displays Division based at the
same Rochester site as I worked. This was also part of Marconi
Avionics, and the company later changed its name to GEC Avionics. I
worked on compilers, linkers and other utility software for the 18
bit 920s before moving on to the Zilog Z8001.
Erik, could you tell me if the instruction code is anything like this:
0 Load B (indexing) register and the Q register (shift extension)
1 Add to accumulator
2 Negate and add to accumulator
3 Store the Q register
4 Load accumulator
5 Store accumulator
6 And to accumulator
7 Jump if zero
8 Jump
9 Jump if negative
10 Increment
11 Store program counter (for function return)
12 Multiply
13 Divide
14 Shift
15 Input/Output and special (like interrupt return)
16 to 31, as above but indexed by B register.
In early versions of the 920, the B and Q registers were the same
register and it and the program counter were held in memory. There
were four levels of interrupt and a set of these registers for each,
held in location 0 to 7. The high end of memory held a paper tape
bootstrap, in later versions, this was just copied into core when the
machine was initialised.
If this indeed a military machine, you can be sure the memory was
erase by flipping every bit backwards and forwards several hundred
times to remove any trace magnetism before it was released from the RAF.
>Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:40:11 -0600
>From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: Shameless Plug - 74xxxx series ICs
>To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>Message-ID: <45F1C62B.5000107 at yahoo.co.uk>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed
>
>Doc Shipley wrote:
>> I was up there yesterday and they have literally
>> 50-60 feet of 6' shelves, nothing but 74xxxx ICs.
>Seriously though, thanks for letting us know - personally I'd rather deal with
>people that someone knows personally than some random ebay auction etc.
MC Howard is about a mile from my house. I've shopped there for
years. The only bad thing I can dredge up to say about them is that
prices may vary wildly. Sometimes they charged me $.50 to program a
handful of EPROMs, other times it was closer to a dollar or two.
I've had many happy shopping hours there.
There. Now someone who has personally dealt with them has
recommended them. :-)
I would have mentioned them myself, but it just never occurred to me
that they were that rare/sought-after/valuable. I guess one takes
the familiar for granted.
Bob, my favorite sales person there, retired last year, but the other
folks seem nice enough. I was used to Bob.
All the times I've been there, they've never had any WD92C32s. I'm
still looking for those at something close to $1 each. I've found
folks who'll sell them at $5 each. I did find a handful of 92C16s
at Howard's. Found some 68882s there, one at 50 MHz once. They
still have a few at 16 MHz.
I never found any 53C80s there, but I've found some 85C30s.
They have a book shelf of old datasheet books for browsing and Bob
used to make me photocopies if I found a chip that interested me.
They also have a large assortment of housings and plugs and
receptacles and sockets and such. Handy to have nearby when you're
trying to get things to mate.
Jeff Walther
On 3/10/07, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
> At 12:32 AM -0500 3/10/07, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> >Did anyone on the list ever get that uVAX2000 SCSI mod working?
>
> All mine can do (or at least could in the late 90's) is format
> drives. The memory is bad, but I could still use it as a formatter.
My memory of things was that you first had to swap out the ROMs, then
hang both a SCSI disk _and_ an RD disk off of the machine, _then_
patch a driver for the SCSI drive, then one could restore a saveset
onto the SCSI disk and stop using the RD disk. Kind of a
chicken-and-the-egg issue, but not insurmountable - just tedious.
> Somehow I think it is easier, and likely cheaper to simply get a
> better VAXstation, or an Alpha. Might not be as much fun, but I like
> my VMS faster! :^)
True enough, but at the time I was fiddling with all of this, I _had_
the uVAX 2000, and RD54s were $800-$1000 each while SCSI disks double
that size were free or nearly so.
SCSI-based VAXstations were nowhere close to free at the time, and I
think a "noname" AT-sized Alpha motherboard was about $50-$100 w/0MB
RAM.
Given the hardware environment of the time, what I was doing made some
modicum of sense. Now, it'd be just for the exercise of doing it,
especially since if I _really_ just want to run VMS software and don't
care about fiddling about with ancient disks and slow processors, I
can throw a copy of VMS up on simh and get "real" work done (and given
that my previous job was as a(n Open) VMS Administrator, I'm not that
long out of using VMS 8-10 hours per day).
Lately, though, I spend more time per month running simulated TOPS-20
than any flavor of VMS. Gotta finish ordering parts for that PANDA
display so I can show it off.
-ethan
> I feel the need to ask - what is it that makes DEC stuff so popular and
> collectible, versus other machines of the same time period? Generally they're
> equally as interesting, and often more so (IMHO) due to all the quirks and
> design differences versus the more mainstream DEC stuff.
>
> So... why? More of a community? Better documentation? Better hardware or
> software availability? What do collectors *do* with their running DEC systems
> anyway?
I can't speak for everyone, but I can cite several reasons why
I'm always more conscious of picking them up:
- Early exposure: A lot of us used DEC systems in college. If
we've stuck with the field, we probably have good memories
of that time, and when you start getting to a certain point, the
nostalgia connecting you back to a happier time is worth a
few bucks.
- Availability: While we'd all love to get our hands on a straight-8
or a PDP-7, there are certainly a number of models that are
quite plentiful. So newcomers to the hobby can get their feet
wet with with something outside the 8-bit world pretty easily.
- Available software: Partly because of the availiability of the
hardware, there's a lot of software out there. So when you
get one up and running, you generally can do more than look
at the blinkin' lights (though that's worthwhile in itself--much
more soothing that a lot of other things).
- Company history: The history of the company is long enough
to be rich and short enough to be an object lesson. Because
of that, the machines are connected with an important element
of the overall history of the comuter industry.
- Interesting machines: As you pointed out, there're often quite
interesting machines. There's a good collection of documentation
out there both in terms of details of specific models and in terms
of the evolution of the families.
- Connection to other history: Because they were so widely
deployed, they're associated with a number of other historic
bits of computing history. UNIX may be the most obvious
example.
Anyway, those are a few that come to mind at the moment.
BLS
Dear vintage computing fans,
in this posting I want to report the community on the restoration and
reverse-engineering project I did over the last two years as a hobby.
Maybe someone is interested in this or even has valuable information.
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/p8172677.jpg
Beginning of 2005 I got this small airborne computer via eBay and
I bought it mainly because of the 96k of core memory inside. Those
days some of these have been sold by ABEX and it is still on their web
page:
http://www.abex.co.uk/sales/electronic/other/programmer/item.htm
But they do not have them any more :-( :-( :-( (see below)
In this forum William Maddox mentioned an eBay auction regarding
one of these in his Nov/17/2003s posting "Latest EBay finds,
including a real museum piece". After getting the unit I
disassembled it and noticed that this must be a complete
computer (size a little bigger than a shoe box) and I tried
to collect information. But as expected no one was able
supply significant information so I started
PHASE0 (January 2005):
Inspecting of all PCBs I drew basic wiring schemes and
located the major parts of the system as timing generation,
core logic, core drivers, microcode, ALU and so on. It became
clear: THIS IS A 12-BIT MACHINE.
The number of connectors of the box is limited (one for power,
5 plugs connecting to some kind of serial differential links and
only one very big 135-pin beast). Since the big plug was
the only one equipted with a protection cover I got the hope,
that everything neccessary to operate the unit is within the
one box I have got and not distributed over more devices.
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/Connectors.jpg
Here I made the decision to continue reverse-engineering with
the goal to make the unit OPERATIONAL.
PHASE1 (March 2005):
I put the core memory aside and investigated the power supply.
Since I do not have got the 100V-tree phase AC of some weired
frequency, this small switch mode power supply seems to
quire, I figured out what voltages this generates and supplied
them from external supplies (5V, 8A; -5V, +12V and variable
voltage for core). I also located the "power good" signal and
applied this, too. See pictures:
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/SupplyWithSubAssembly.jpghttp://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/SupplyBackplane.jpghttp://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/PowerSuppSubAssy1.jpg
Now I was able to supply power and observed with the oscilloscope
that there is activity. Now I thoroughly examined the core section
until I had a good idea how it works, leading to
PHASE2 (April 2005):
supplying data to the data lines by using a 12-bit DIP-switch.
This allowed me to make te processor reading the same word
of data over and over again and therby stepping through the
whole address space.
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/Switches.jpg
With this I characterized the core memory timing, I tried
to identify important lines, refined my schematics and
connected a logic analyzer to all vital signals. In applying
different patterns I already discovered read instructions,
2-cycle instructions, read-modify-write instructions and
some instructions freezing the unit and requiring a power
cycle (not only a reset pulse!):
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/Switches.jpghttp://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/DeviceUnderTest.jpg
In parallel I did detective work on the stickers and
posted my information to a thread in rec.aviation.military.
This lead to the suspicion that the unit is from an early
tornado aircraft (probably only from one of the first
prototypes) and was responsible for controling some kind
of display:
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/Sticker1.jpg
These experiments showed me that (a) the machine is not
completely dead and that (b) the command set is not
compatible (this was my hope first) with the well known
PDP8 or any other known 12-bit machine. So what was
needed was
PHASE 3 (Sep 2005)
an in-circuit analyter and the possibility to read
and write core memory. With quite a amount of reverse-
engineering, thinking and try-and-error I discovered a
DMA mechanism which in my opinion was used to load
software onto the unit via the big plug - but was
unused during normal operation (big plug sealed off).
Since I hate any PC-stuff and I needed a powerful
and real-time capable tool to generate the appropriate
timing for writing into the core, I decided to use a
vintage transputer board from a ParsyTec-Megaframe,
running the operating system helios (beautiful
unix-type parallel OS) which I connected to the Programmer
Electronic Control using a homemade interface PCB and
flat ribbon cables:
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/TrapuInterface.jpg
During this process I refined my schematics again,
analyzed the ALU and the timing generation and made more
professional connections to the logic analyzer:
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/Connection.jpg
Here much efford went into establishing all the
tools needed - but it was worth the efford, since in
this environment the complete cycle of
- doing a modification (solder iron),
- booting the helios (UNIX!),
- triggering the logic analyzer
- launching the test software
- read out the results
only takes 20 seconds. To be on-topic here: Vintage techniques
involved in the setup:
+ Sun Sparc 20 for GPIB-interfacing to logic analzyer, and
for booting the helios client via BBK-S4 board.
+ One T805 entry-node of a Parsytec PowerXplorer for
development and ompiling of the helios software.
This is booted from the SunSparc 20 as well.
+ SGI Indigo2 as frontend and data processing.
Soon the timing matched what the processor does on its own.
PHASE4 (Nov 2005):
I inserted the core memory and tested my tools on word 0
only (read, write) and it was perfect. So the hope was to
recover information still sitting in the memory. But
after doing tests on word 0 and than reading the remaining
4095 words, I only discovered some type of test pattern
beeing inside the memory. But now the tools worked very well
allowing cycles of
(1) Write test patterns
(2) Let unit execute some cycles
(3) Observe dataflow (logic analyzer) and read out
core memory.
(4) Put data into files for later analysis (dinotrace).
One of these cycles takes around 15 seconds.
PHASE5 (Jan 2006):
Doing lots of cycles I discovered lots of commands and
instructions. So this lead to defining a own assembler
language.
In parallel I implemented an assembler understanding the
already discovered commands and generating files suitable
for writing into the core memory. So it became more and
more comfortable to write test programs to analyze new
instructions.
In this manner I analyzed systematically the whole 12
bit space to discover jump instructions, arithmetic
instructions and so on. In summary this is a VERY
ARCHAIC and unusual machine:
- THE MACHINE HAS 1 ACCUMULATOR
- THERE EXISTS ONE INDEX REGISTER (indirect addressing)
- CALCULATION IS DONE IN 1-complement!!!
- NO CARRY-FLAG (essentially all arithmetic
only uses bit 0-11, bit 12 is sign/carry)
- SHIFT-COMMANDS use a hidden 12bit SHIFT REGISTER!
- There is a MULTIPLY-INSTRUCTION (did not expect this!)!!!
- Only one instruction for ABSOLUTE JUMPS using
a very delicate table jump algorithm. This can
be used to simulate someting like a CALL (no stack
on this unit!) - Really ugly!
Doing this it became obvious that the unit has problems
in accessing the upper 4k words of memory. In doing so
it freezes, requiring a power cycle to recover. So far
I was not able to locate the problem and unfortunately
all attempts to get hands on a second unit for swapping
the micro code and sequence generator failed.
# ##
### #
# #
##### #
# #
### #
# ##
It must be a problem with micro-code since the
unit can execute code in the upper half, but
data access fails.
In writing bigger programs I encountered problems in my
transputer setup related to refresh cycles on the transputer
PCB:
PHASE 6 (Nov 2006):
The box itself runs at 1.2us cycle time for core accesses,
but the core timing has to be accurate to <30ns for
proper operation. The built-in refresh of the DRAM
on the transputer lead to an error-rate of approx 1%
in my tools writing and reading core. So a small PCB
had to be added to the transputer setup to detect
this refresh cycles and to synchronize the helios
software to them:
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/RefreshDetect.jpghttp://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/T805refreshOK.jpg
With this the error rate dropped to 0.004% which is
more than enough for the application. From there on
the complete setup did not change any more:
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/SetUpPanorama.jpghttp://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/SetUpPanoramaExplained.jpg
Today the assembler understands approximately 25 instructions,
generates appropriate warnings and errors and warns if an
instruction will freeze the unit (TCL together with m4 makes
it very easy to write such a macro-assembler and tcl past
8.4.7 is reasonable fast to lead to very short compile
times even on my slow hardware)...
PHASE 7 (Jan 2007):
A closer look at the serial links revealed that they are
some type of serial, differential SPI buses, allowing messages
of 12 bit + 2bit identifier + some kind of address. Not
all identifiers can be sent out on all plugs. These
interfaces (as my limited understanding of this is) should
be panavia-link or short panlink interfaces. But sorry - I do
not know any details about this:
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/PanLink1.gif
The latest action was, to build a small interface PCB to
decode the messages, i.e. seperate data from address and
identifier and generate CS and CE signals. With this
it is possible to connect different devices to these serial
links in the future.
The first device I connected two weeks ago was a small LCD
display and look - it works:
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/ConsoleLCDonDPL03.jpg
In my assembler, this "Hello World" looks like this (including
initialization of the display):
reset: MTA 0b00111000 ; Display Initialisieren (8bit, 5*8 chars)
WDPL3.ID0 0 ; Befehl ans Display (RS=0)
DELAY(4200) ; Warten 4.2ms bis Display initialisiert
MTA 0b00000001 ; Display Loeschen
WDPL3.ID0 0 ; Befehl ans Display (RS=0)
DELAY(1640) ; 1.64ms Wait bis sich Display geloescht hat
MTA 0b00001111 ; Cursor an, Display ist jetzt leer mit Cursor
WDPL3.ID0 0 ; Befehl ans Display (RS=0)
DELAY(110) ; 110us Wait, dann hat sich das Display konfiguriert
MTA 0b00000110 ; Auto-Increment-Mode, d.h.Cursor wandert
WDPL3.ID0 0 ; Befehl ans Display (RS=0)
DELAY(50) ; Nach 50us Wait ist der Cursor an und alles bereit
;
; Text ans Display ausgeben
;
MTA Text ; Zeiger auf Text
STA Index ; initialisieren
loop: LDI Index ; Naechsten Buchstaben holen
LDA 0 ; und Daten ans Display (RS=1)
RJAZ Fin ; falls nicht 0 (das waere Ende)
WDPL3.ID0 1 ; schicken. Danach
INC Index ; Index erhoehen und warten...
DELAY(50) ; 50us Wait
rjmp loop ; Naechsten Buchstaben
Fin: rjmp Fin ; Endlos-Schleife!
In this DELAY is a macro defined within the assembler and consisting of
a simple loop.
So this is the current state!
F U T U R E :
The following things are still on my to-do-list:
(1) The unit has got a 12bit-start/compare timer which
I currently do not have access to.
(2) Approx 40 of the possible bit-patterns are not valid
commands now - either I do not understand their meaning
yet or the microcode is somehow defective.
(3) I can read data from the plugs, but I did not
discover a sync mechanism: When has data completely
arrived???
(4) There is still the problem of the unit freezing in
accessing the upper memory half.
(5) On each serial link, there seems to be an interrupt
signal. I do not know how to enable the interrupts
and what action they cause (I suppose they cause a
jump to a certain address in memory).
So thank you for reading all this junk of bad English and
maybe something was interesting for you. For me the work on
this unit was a hobby and real fun. I spent around one day a
month on this unit and my big hope would be to
G E T H A N D S O N A S E C O N D
O F T H E S E "Programmer Electronic Controls"
Best regards,
happy computing,
Erik.
> - Available software: Partly because of the availiability of the
> hardware, there's a lot of software out there. So when you
> get one up and running, you generally can do more than look
> at the blinkin' lights (though that's worthwhile in itself--much
> more soothing that a lot of other things).
DEC computers have literally two orders of magnitude more software
titles that still exist than most other systems. The closest runners
up are HP and Data General, though CHM has almost no DG software.
It is really sad how little software from other vendors has survived,
and beleive me, I've been beating the bushes trying to find it!