Has anyone read Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the
Computer Age ?
http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/dp/0887309895
I swear the more and more I read about the history of computers, the
more I keep coming back to Xerox PARC. The 70's must have been a pretty
exciting time to be there.
Anyone have any back stories or have read the book? I've got it on
order, but I've read some scathing reviews about how the author got it
wrong. I know some of the scathing reviews might be by people who
weren't described in a favorable light in the book --- but I've seen
plenty of technical stories get screwed up.
Also any comments on Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System
would be helpful.
Thanks
Keith
http://gcn.com/articles/1998/08/31/smart-ship-inquiry-a-go.aspx
Can this end now?
--- On Wed, 6/10/09, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
> From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
> Subject: Re: Windows for critical infrastructure (was Re: UNIX V7)
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2009, 5:43 PM
> On Jun 10, 2009, at 5:36 PM, William
> Donzelli wrote:
> >> The US Navy at one point was switching from Unix
> to Windows.? They had major
> >> problems with this on the USS Yorktown, and had to
> tow it back to port.? I
> >> don't know whether they've completed the switch.
> >
> > That wiki entry seems a little biased, doesn't it?
>
> ? If "showing a failure of Windows" means "biased",
> yes.
>
> > ALL ships in the US Navy have an incredible amount of
> redundancy, and
> > there are always ways to go two or three technology
> generations back
> > to get things back up in running. The idea that
> somehow this network
> > was such a single point of failure to the point that
> the ship was dead
> > in the water just STINKS of being urban legend.
>
> ? I saw it on CNN when it happened.
>
> > Did something fail?
> > Sure - this was a test bed, and these things are
> supposed to fail. And
> > when they fail, the engineers scour over the results
> and do not get
> > into emergency mode. It already seems like the whole
> towing claim is
> > dubious at best. A
>
> ? Sorry, it happened.? Unless the whole thing was
> a hoax, complete with pictures.
>
> ? ? ? ???-Dave
>
> --Dave McGuire
> Port Charlotte, FL
>
>
I have in my grubby little hands an Elektronika MK-85 calculator, which
externally is a spot-on clone of the Casio FX-700P BASIC programmable
calculator. Functionally, it's identical as well, with a few
enhancements (pixel-addressable graphics, a Cyrillic character-set, etc)
Internally though, they're 100% different -- the processor in the MK-85
is a Russian PDP-11 knockoff. It's not a power-efficient CPU by any
means, so to ensure decent battery life the CPU speed is severely
limited. Not sure exactly what speed it runs at (anyone out there
know?) but the result is by far the slowest calculator I've ever used.
Computing the sine of an angle in degrees using the built-in "SIN"
function takes anywhere between 2 and 7 seconds by my stopwatch.
So the MK-85 takes an otherwise-elegant and useful 16-bit CPU, attaches
it to a mere 2K of RAM and 8K of ROM and runs at an insanely low clock
speed in order to allow the battery life to be more than a few
minutes... I just have to wonder why they decided to go with a PDP-11
clone over, say, a Z80 clone... :).
(The BASIC implementation is also incredibly buggy, mostly due to poor
argument checking... see http://www.pisi.com.pl/piotr433/mk85mc1e.htm
for a cool example of exploiting a bug in INPUT to do machine-language
coding, in a way only a contortionist could love...)
I just find this machine fascinating, for a number of reasons. A
handheld PDP-11! (Sort of.) Anyone else know of examples of odd-duck
machines like this, where the hardware is probably not the best choice
for the application? (But it's cool anyway?)
- Josh
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
>>>> Hmm, MSCP on my PDP-11/24. 8-)
>>> Yes, with a high-speed RD52 for authenticity ;-)
>> Not possible. The only MSCP controller DEC did for Unibus was to SDI
>> (tha UDA50). The only MSCP to MFM controller DEC did was for Q-bus (the
>> RQDX series).
>
> What happens if you put a DW11B (Unius - Qbus interface) in the Unibus
> machine and connect the Qbus side of that to an RQDXm? Obviously it can
> only support 18 it DMA, but it does support that.
>
> I know for a fact that you can use an RLV11 on a Unibus machine that way,
> I did it on an 11/45 with no problems.
Yeah, that could possibly work. As long as you accept the 18-bit DMA
address limitation.
I think the UDA50 and the KDA50/RQDX all look similar enough at the port
level that it could work fine.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dave McGuire wrote:
>>> >> It's damnably slow, but at least it works.
>> >
>> > Yep. The scary thing is...an OS like RSX-11 or RSTS/E is quite zippy
>> > on a machine like that.
>
> Hmmm. Porting (or writing a work-alike of) RSX-11 for a newer
> architecture (suck as PC -- for the low cost) comes to mind.
Not a big problem as such. You could probably almost reuse much of the
existing code.
The big problem would be that you'd need to write all the applications
as well.
The paradisgms of RSX comes nowhere near Unix, so almost no existing
programs will be very usable under RSX.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
> From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
>
> Silly question, Roger...
>
> What is the AC line voltage at the keypunch? At the time that punch
> was made "nominal" nameplate voltage was about 117VAC. It's crept up
> a bit over the years to 120VAC (I just measured the voltage at an
> outlet here and it's 126VAC).
>
> --Chuck
The 029's power supply has been strapped for 230v operation. The
actual supply is usually around 245 volts, though I have seen it as
high as 253 and the specification is 216 to 253. The keypunch also has
an option for strapping to 208 volts as well as the original straps
for 115v.
Roger Holmes
> Here is a challenge to the whole list membership. Lots of folks here
> are well embedded into the industry, so I think this is a good sample.
> Try to think of as many new customers (not upgrades) for the following
> OSes (again, keeping the old names): AOS/VS, MCP, TOPS-10, TOPS-20,
> OS/2200, VM, MVS, VSE, OS/400, Multics, PrimOS. Lets keep this to year
> 2009. I bet we can not even get to twenty.
For what it's worth, here's two recent articles about what Unisys is
up to with the MCP / OS2200 machines:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/26/unisys_mainframe_upgradeshttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/08/unisys_clearpath_kickers
Apparently a mix of emulation on the low end and "real" chips on the
high end. What I find fascinating is that Unisys sells a laptop (lx170)
for MCP devs which runs the emulator on top of Windows (seems like the
lowest-end emulated MCP servers are Dells running Windows too). I have
no idea who buys this stuff though.
I'm under 30, so I don't remember the early 80s. It seems like Burroughs
had some pretty good technology up to that point. What happened to them
that didn't happen to IBM?
John Finigan
Hi! Does anyone have the NEC uPD7220/GDC Design Manual?
I am looking for one as part of research on building a home brew NEC 7220
video board.
On a related but different subject if anyone is interested, I just got the
N8VEM VDU board working (SY6545 based) and there are photos in the N8VEM
wiki.
http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/browse/#view=ViewFolder¶m=VDU
Thanks and have a nice day!
Andrew Lynch
