not sure the 2nd 7220 in the APC is for more colors or not. They are on separate boards. My rather uneducated guess was a 2nd was needed to implement the virtual screen.
I picked up the last of Fred's stuff yesterday, and I have a couple of
cards I can't find much information on:
1. UNIBUS card made by ComDesign
Picture at http://flic.kr/p/cQ6PYd. Marked "Epsilon US 2000 Board" and
"Assy no. 010231". It's got a 80186, 1 2910, 2 2901's and an 82586
(IEEE802.3 coprocessor). I therefore figure this is a UNIBUS Ethernet
NIC (like a DELUA). Is anything known about these cards? DIP switch
configuration would be good to know, as would the function of the 5
on/off toggle switches on top.
2. Q-BUS card, probably made by Plessey
Picture at http://flic.kr/p/cQ6Rtf. Marked "P/N 703365-100D". Has a
COM8017 UART. Nothing else known...
Thanks,
Camiel
Anyone have an MXV11-B (M7195) going spare? I'd like to be able to use
TU58 emulation to get my "tiny" (SB-11) 11/23 system bootstrapped, plus
right now the only dual-height memory board I have is a mere 32K; the
MXV11-B seems like a perfect fit for this system (128K, dual SLU, LTC,
etc) if I can just find one...
Thanks as always,
Josh
Hello all,
I'm afraid I'm more of a long-time appreciator than a regular poster here, but I wanted to share a link to an archive of episodes and clips from the TVOntario show, 'Bits and Bytes' ? partly because there probably are a few people who saw this show when it originally aired and might enjoy a trip down memory lane, partly because it features many of the microcomputers that were popular in North America back then, and partly because its explanation of many of the key concepts are still relevant today. (Plus, for those who haven't seen it, it's also quite entertaining.)
The channel is over at http://www.youtube.com/user/bitsandbytestvo, and I've included a modified blurb from that page below for people's information. Hope this brings back a few memories, and even educates a few of the people who are too young to have caught it first time 'round. This is the show that got me into computing and programming (my first computer was the Commodore 64), and I know that the episode on computer music, and the clip about compilers and interpreters have both been used to explain concepts in current computer science and computer music classes (as in, since the show became available again on YouTube).
Cheers and (hopefully) enjoy!
Peter
P.S. And for those who are concerned about such things, from what I've been able to ascertain, this show is no longer available for purchase from TVO and, for that matter, they no longer have the full set of episodes in their own archives.
-----
Bits and Bytes is a classic, and still foundational, Canadian television series about microcomputers and the key concepts behind them. It was produced by TVOntario in 1983, and stars Luba Goy as the instructor, and Billy Van as the student.
The show consisted of 12 episodes and featured many of the classic 80s microcomputers including the Apple ][, Commodore PET, VIC 20 and 64, Atari 800, TRS-80, TI 99 and the IBM PC. The subjects were:
Program 1: Getting Started
Program 2: Ready-Made Programs
Program 3: How Programs Work?
Program 4: File & Data Management
Program 5: Communication Between Computers
Program 6: Computer Languages
Program 7: Computer-Assisted Instruction
Program 8: Games & Simulations
Program 9: Computer Graphics
Program 10: Computer Music
Program 11: Computers at Work
Program 12: What Next?
On 2012-08-09 22:10, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
> On 8/9/12 10:21 AM, Richard wrote:
>> >I have been attempting to find details on the Apollo DOMAIN/OS
>> >windowing environment before they started running X11, but so far
>> >haven't been able to find much of anything.
>> >
> There wasn't anything in the Apollo documents on bitsavers?
>
> In the queue are about 100 ESDI Apollo disks with what HP had left of Apollo's
> development environment. I'm hoping they're still readable.
Gah! It's over 20 years now since I used the window system on Domain OS,
but I still shudder at the memory. It was not fun.
From what small details I can still remember it made no difference
between the mouse pointer and the text cursor. Move one, and you moved
both. Input for a window was normally done in a special sub-window one
line high, at the bottom of the window.
In general it was weird and somewhat unintuitive, and we *longed* for a
switch to X11, but since X11 took much more resources, it took a few
years before we actually switched.
There were some cool concepts in Domain/OS, but for the most part, it
was just weird and horrible.
Johnny
Original Message:
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:53:41 -0400
From: "Andrew Lynch" <LYNCHAJ at yahoo.com>
....
The NEC uPD7220 readily adapts itself to the S-100 bus and provides a nice
VGA monitor compatible bitmap. However it is completely non-VGA compatible
and really is as different from the MC6845 derivative as can possibly exist.
It uses a totally different approach down to the philosophical theory of
design!
If you or anyone else has some insight on how to implement a register
compatible SVGA on the S-100 bus I am very willing to listen! Thanks and
have a nice day!
Andrew Lynch
-------Reply:-------
Isn't it always the way... a couple of weeks ago I finally threw out about
4" worth of detailed OEM documentation about designing for and implementing
PCChips VGA chips, among others...
The NCR Decision Mate (for one) used the 7220 and I even still have some of
the guts of one including the video board if it's any use to anyone. IIRC
there were some drivers etc. to make them semi-compatible with the PC; maybe
you can find something useful among the NCR crowd?
> From: Jochen Kunz <jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de>
> Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 16:42:31 +0200
> Subject: Re: Found a rs6000 43p
> John Many Jars <john at yoyodyne-propulsion.net> wrote:
>
>> This one has AIX on it... it fails bootup and drops you to some sort
>> of prompt right after it plays it's tune (with the little speaker
>> icon).
>>
>> You can type ls at the prompt and gets what looks like a list of devices.
>>
>> Should I bit it, or is it worth trying to fix? Anyone point me in the
>> right direction?
> There are several different variants of 43P. This one seems to be a
> 43P-150 because you can type "ls" and get a divice tree. This sounds
> like the OpenFirmWare of a CHRP machine. The enclosure of the machine
> should be black?
>
> You have a quite capable PPC machine there. You could reinstall AIX.
> Instalation media should be obtainable. An other option is to install
> NetBSD. Maybe it drops to OFW just because autoboot is disabled. Try to
> type "boot" at the OFW prompt and see..
>
> \end{Jochen}
It should also run Solaris 2.5.1. I think I have the install CD.
--
Michael Thompson
Someone I know on this list has an ASR33 Teletype which has a tractor feed.
I am sure that all the ones I used at the time were friction feed. Was
tractor feed a common thing on these terminals?
Regards
Rob