Brent Hilpert wrote:
Just rumour to me, but circa 1980 when I was doing some software development
with the spanky new 68000, I was told that the 68000 had been prototyped
as (literally) a large wall of SSI/MSI logic.
Billy responds:
That was pretty much the modus operandi on early MSI/LSI chips. All of the
early ASIC's I worked with were bread boarded from SSI or even single gate
ICs. The vendors would provide design kits with lots of these little chips.
Most of them were 4 or 8 pins; a few were 14 or 16 pins. You can still buy
them today to patch bugs on LSI until you can roll the metal. First ones
were TTL, then they moved to CMOS. I even remember one ASIC that we used
ECL gates on.
This was in the early 80's. Gradually, the design software caught up and
you could simulate your design on a computer. It's hard to remember that in
the days before PCs, many of tools we take for granted, didn't exist. For
example, when CDC was designing the Star series and the ETA machines, the
early design automation consisted of huge programs to lay out the logic.
The designer input the logic equations on decks of cards. I remember seeing
some of these early programs taking 20-40 hours to run, with card decks of
thousands of cards.
I think I have a few of these early proto boards left. They would make a
great display on the progress in the industry. We used a 12" by 24" size
and interconnected them with ribbon cable. I never saw a wall mounted unit.
But we had many that covered a standard workbench top and they later fit
into a 24 pin package.
Billy
Doug Yowza
Doug,
In searching information regarding the GRiD 1537E, I located your 10 April 1998 Internet "message" wherein you stated
you ".can give specs and pin-outs to anybody that would like to get it." Please e-mail that data for 1537E to me at
your earliest convenience.
Thank you very much.
Allan Alves
ORI Services Corp.
Tel: (619) 524-3786
e-mail: alves at spawar.navy.mil
FAX: (619) 524-2871
> > I believe that was true of the 6809. Somewhere there was published
> > an interview (BYTE, probably) with a member of the design team where
> > he mentions this.
>
> Well, that article is/was on-line. I saw it one month ago.
http://tlindner.macmess.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/byte_6809_articles.p…
I remember reading the original article in Byte. I learned assembler on the 6800 via the
_excellent_ Heathkit ET-3400 course and trainer and loved the 6800's simple, clear architecture
and instruction set. The '09 was the ultimate evolution of a great CPU.
William
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Seth asks:
> 3) Are the stories about the Boston Computer Museum receiving a
> complete PDP-6 and then chopping it up to sell as gifts truth or
> urban legend?
I don't know about the BCM, but I have a couple of boards from
decomissioned PDP-6's. They were not disassembled out of malice
but out of lack of facility to store them.
> 4) Does any PDP-6 software still exist, especially PDP-6 ITS ? (I
> haven't found any on Bitsavers, so I'm guessing the answer is "no")
In between scraps found on the DECUS sources and some
files I've cobbled together over the years from friends in the
southern hemisphere, I think I have two mostly
complete sets of sources for the PDP-6 monitor. I discussed
this a bit on alt.sys.pdp10 last year. Get me worked up and
I might actually get them to build :-). Right now they're at
http://pdp-6.trailing-edge.com/
Note that most of the early DECUS LIB-10 entries are actually
PDP-6 software (with occasional notes on what you have to
patch/modify to make it work on a -10). I highly recommend
that you browse them.
Last year on alt.sys.pdp10 I also initiated some discussions
about the MACRO differences necessary to assemble the
earliest source files (where the syntax was slightly different).
I have mentioned to Al that I am very interested in
the oldest 36-bit Macro source files that he has from the
LCG archives. I suspect there's at least some interesting
stuff there but it's hard to sort out.
Tim.
At 09:28 AM 4/3/2007, William Donzelli wrote:
>>> 3) Are the stories about the Boston Computer Museum receiving a
>>> complete PDP-6 and then chopping it up to sell as gifts truth or
>>> urban legend?
>
>Until someone comes up with hard evidence that BCM had one then
>scrapped it - something like photographic evidence of the PDP-6 in the
>collection, inclusion in an official inventory (and then not), or
>otherwise - I discount it as just a story. Nearly everyone I have
>talked to about it is very insistent about BCM scrapping a PDP-6, but
>the sources of their information is always someone else with the same
>unsupported and often inconsistent facts. Basically, the whole story
>has too many of the red flags that make up a good urban legend.
OK, I bought one of those boards on eBay a few years ago.
I sent an email to Gordon Bell to establish provenance.
See below. I sent him a picture of the board.
- John
Subject: RE: PDP-6 board from The Computer Museum, Boston
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 14:06:59 -0800
Message-ID: <5AE8A38330D3664FAEB010BC1D00283901499120 at RED-MSG-20.redmond.corp.microsoft.com>
X-MS-Has-Attach: yes
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
From: "Gordon Bell" <gbell at microsoft.com>
To: "John Foust" <jfoust at threedee.com>
Cc: "John Toole" <toole at computerhistory.org>, "Len Shustek" <len at shustek.com>,
"Kirsten Tashev" <tashev at computerhistory.org>,
"Dag Spicer" <spicer at computerhistory.org>
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 10 Feb 2006 22:07:16.0050 (UTC) FILETIME=[5A382320:01C62E8E]
Status:
Yes.
I signed the PDP-6, 4 register, bit slice board in the photo.
It came from the Computer Museum in Boston where it was sold in their store
Let me be clear The Computer Museum (TCM) was NEVER called the Boston Computer Museum...
Boston was a temporary home when computing passed through New England, but the city itself gave nothing to it.
I don't believe the origin can be traced to any machine, since there were no serial numbers, and the modification level would also be too hard to correlate with any time or place.
The Museum got a large number of spares and scraps of all kinds from Digital and it was undoubtedly one of those.
To my knowledge, the museum has never engaged in gutting machines for components, although I would happily agree that this is a good idea when we have duplicates and crippled or partial artifacts.
As a former collector, founder, and board member of the Digital Computer Museum > The Computer Museum >> current Computer History Museum (a name I deplore and that exists only because of the way the Museum left Boston) I have always been a strong advocate of getting as many artifacts into as many hands as possible, and this includes selling museum artifacts when appropriate. In essence a whole industry of museums and collectors is essential.
Incidentally, at one point there was a flame in pre-blog days about the tragedy of the museum selling boards, etc. in which I never engaged.
As someone who has contributed about $10 million as well as time, etc. to this endeavor, I can only shake my head... and wonder where those folks were when the museum needed their financial and time support.
The lovely ending is that the museum finally has a wonderful home and caring environment with lots of people that support it with love, time, and money.
Hope you have or intend to visit it in Mountain View.
I trust I have your own financial support and trust you are a member there, too.
See <http://www.computerhistory.org/>www.computerhistory.org
g
-----Original Message-----
From: John Foust [mailto:jfoust at threedee.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 1:31 AM
To: Gordon Bell
Subject: PDP-6 board from BCM?
Can I confirm the provenance of an item I purchased?
It's an S6205D board, signed by "Gordon Bell". Below is a Usenet
post that may describe the event at the Boston Computer Museum
where it was first sold.
Did you sign this board, and do you remember the circumstances?
- John
Article 1624 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: shellx.best.com!news1.best.com!sgigate.sgi.com!enews.sgi.com!decwrl!pa.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!lead.zk3.dec.com!zk2nws.zko.dec.com!denton.zko.dec.com!amartin
From: amartin at denton.zko.dec.com (Alan H. Martin)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Working for PDP-10 En
Date: 21 Feb 1996 13:12:21 GMT
Organization: DEC
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <4gf5nl$kun at zk2nws.zko.dec.com>
References: <DMJ1IM.MuJ at network.com> <1996Feb14.164932.1 at eisner.decus.org> <aldersonDMsnx7.5vM at netcom.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: denton.zko.dec.com
In article <aldersonDMsnx7.5vM at netcom.com> alderson at netcom.com writes:
>In article <1996Feb14.164932.1 at eisner.decus.org> stevens_j at eisner.decus.org
>(Jack H. Stevens) writes:
...
>>How about trying The Computer Museum, in Boston? (also at http://www.tcm.org)
>
>Bad idea. The Computer Museum has buried any interesting (read "36-bit")
>hardware. They were given, for example, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence
>Laboratory PDP-6 in 1984, after it was shown at the Fall DECUS Symposia (for
>the 20th Anniversary of 36-Bit Computing).
>
>It has never been made available for public view; as far as anyone can tell,
>it has disappeared from the face of the earth.
I'm hazy on dates, but if the 6 in question was donated before the museum's
move from MR2 to Boston, you ain't likely to see it in one piece ever again.
They had a garage sale of unwanted items in the MR1 cafeteria one Saturday
before the move, and were selling a PDP-6 module-by-module. An S6205K
"Arithmetic Registers" module (1-bit slice of AR/MQ/MB/<light buffer>) went
for $7, autographed by Gordon Bell.
I asked him whether read-in mode was implemented as a diode array encoding
instructions. He said no, and kindly recommended the 6205 as a particularly
central module to have, instead.
/AHM
--
Alan Howard Martin AMartin at TLE.ENet.DEC.Com
<file://F:\Eudora\attach\gbellboard.jpg>
gbellboard.jpg
<file://F:\Eudora\attach\gbellboard.jpg> gbellboard.jpg
> On one of the pages linked from the homebrewcpu.org page is a
> project that uses surface-mount transistors on what amount to tiny
> flipchips. If you're insane enough to try a discrete 8080, go with
> that approach.
Which link is it?
This is homebrew SLT?
1) Are there any complete PDP-6s anywhere at all?
There are none known to exist
2) Does the Computer History Museum in Mountain View have any PDP-6
artifacts?
CHM has the Fast Memory chassis from the Stanford PDP-6
3) Are the stories about the Boston Computer Museum receiving a
complete PDP-6 and then chopping it up to sell as gifts truth or
urban legend?
Ken Sumerall and I worked on putting this rumor to bed about six
months ago. There are no records of BCM ever receiving the PDP-6
>from Stanford.
As best as we were able to determine, the Stanford PDP-6 that was
shown at DECUS for the 10th anniversary of the 36 bit product line
was sent somewhere within DEC, it was NEVER sent to BCM. When Compaq
donated their museum holdings to the Computer Museum History Center
the Fast Memory chassis was sent. There is no evidence of any other
part of the system (or a rumored additional PDP-1) surviving. It is
unknown what happened to the rest of the PDP-6. We do know that we
don't have it.
This message has been forwarded from Usenet. To reply to the
original author, use the email address from the forwarded message.
Date: 3 Apr 2007 10:38:37 -0700
Groups: comp.sys.dec
From: "Sam Hoblit" <shoblit at gmail.com>
Org: http://groups.google.com
Subject: TK50 tapes
Id: <1175621917.544692.78610 at n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>
========
In the process of getting rid of some old equipment I was able to save
back a slew of TK50 tapes (~120). Before throwing them out, I thought
I'd offer them here in case anyone is interested. Local pickup on Long
Island. I could also bring them into NYC, if necessary. Let me know in
the next couple weeks if you would like them, otherwise into the
dumpster they go.
Will wrote:
> Tim wrote:
>> I don't know about the BCM, but I have a couple of boards from
>> decomissioned PDP-6's. They were not disassembled out of malice
>> but out of lack of facility to store them.
> When was this?
I got the boards circa 1995. The guy who gave them to me related
that the PDP-6 had been decommisioned circa early 80's (replaced
with a FOONLY - that ought to narrow it down for you!), and he
was keeping KS10's and Massbus disk and tapes drive running
in his house through most of the 90's :-).
I'm not sure why I'm making any attempt at obfuscating this
guy's identity, I gave away so many clues above that it's
obvious who it is by now! Maybe my obfuscation is a lame attempt
at stopping the "you tore up a PDP-6" blame game.
Tim.
