Hello!
Anyoen have a VAXstation 4000/VLC ROM set and NVRAM available? Got one
here that was billed as "not working" so I tried reseating everything.
Now it doesn't do anything and the likely culprit is these.
--
Cory Smelosky
http://gewt.net Personal stuff
http://gimme-sympathy.org Projects
On 11/3/2013 1:25 PM, Win Heagy wrote:
> I misplaced this card and cannot figure out which machine it goes
> with. There are no markings on the board beyond what is on the chips.
> Any ideas what this might be? That's a DB25 in the lower left of the
> full board pic.
>
> There are 2 pictures int this imgur set.
>
> http://imgur.com/3QcLnlZ
>
> Thanks,
>
> Win
>
>
The 9901/9902 combo is a bit of a giveaway.
Find a copy of the 9900 Family Systems Design Guide for more info e.g. at
https://archive.org/details/9900MicroprocessorSeriesFamilySystemsDesignData…
There, you will learn that the TI 9900 family (whose processor chips included the 9900,
9989, 9995 (?), and others) was a bit of an oddity in various ways (though that particular
manual was first class).
One oddity was its IO mechanism, using a single-bit-wide serial IO bus called the CRU.
IO chips designed for the CRU bus (including the 9901 "system controller", and the 9902
UART, and many others, were realistically only usable with other 9900-family chips.
The 9900 architecture was used in the 990 family of "minicomputers" including the 990/4
and its bigger brother the 990/10. TXDS was the "OS" (being generous again here) on
the /4; something called AMPL ran on the /10.
There are some pictures around the net, and a few writeups.
I can't tell from the one picture (where is the other?) if that's what you've got, and I can't
remember whether the /4 we had at work used the 9901 and/or 9902 on its serial cards.
There is a 990/4 Maintenance Guide (and other 990-family stuff) on bitsavers which might be
worth a look, at or near
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ti/990/990-4/
The TI99/4 and related home computer boxes are very different physically although likely use
chips from the same family. Apparently there was a range of external peripherals.
You'll work it out.
Have a lot of fun,
John
----- Original Message -----
> Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 18:14:46 +0000
> From: Dave <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com>
> On 03/11/2013 16:49, Chuck Guzis wrote:
...
>> I'm guessing that the primary consumer of this device will be the DEC
>> community. The personal computer community has had various devices
>> (such as IDE or flash drive) as replacements.
>>
>> --Chuck
>>
> I think there are lots of folks with odd-ball systems with MFM drives. I
> have IBM3174 screen controllers....
>
> Dave
>
Cromemco (10kB 'sectors')...
The email below came up on the Rescue list.
-----Original Message-----
From: rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org] On
Behalf Of Ten Yen
Sent: 03 November 2013 22:38
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: [rescue] DEC kit available in London, UK, if your quick.
Heya,
so there is this stuff:
BA213 skunk box containing many cards
including a ?3500? and a II (don't power it up until you've configured the
system you want!) and a MicroVax 2000 client / server pair with a TK50.
safe in a basement. . .
and under a tarp since this evening (its raining hard ;/ but we needed to
compromise for a weeks grace) :
PMAX DECstations (3100 and 5100) and other random crap (3100 style storage
expansion boxes, LAT terminal servers etc. G3 mac)
till tuesday when it will be thrown out. you'd make some old hoarders happy
(and save a trip to the dump) if you can pick them up ASAP.
some photos:
http://tenyen.net/womble/
werd,
--
http://tenyen.net/
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
While reading the wikipedia article on the ILLIAC IV there's a curious
excerpt relating to the disk media:
"They also provided a Burroughs B6500 mainframe to act as a front-end
controller. Connected to the B6500 was a laser optical recording medium, a
write-once system that stored up to 1 Tbit on a plastic disk covered with
a thin metal film."
Anyone know what this device was?
Cheers;
- JP
Hampton, Iowa
Dear Classiccmp community,
After a long time of searching on myself with only minimal results on the "CPT Phoenix Start" - system, I would like to tap the collective knowledge.
The system (powersupply + mainbox (3.5"floppy) + keyboard (with an interesting shape) + portrait full page screen) itself is fine, tries to boot, has a daisy-wheel printer and is only missing the 3.5" boot media.
I have only the bare hardware and a couple of cables, assume it was used in professional word-processing.
Appreciate any pointer.
Mit freundlichen Gr??en,
With kind Regards,
Bernhard Wulf
>
> From: David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 21:07:35 -0400
> Subject: Re: Looking for a MicroController Recommedation
> On Nov 2, 2013, at 17:13, John Wilson <wilson at dbit.com> wrote:
>
> You could probably pair it with a small CPLD or FPGA to help
> with the shifting (if, as Chuck pointed out, the SPI hardware won't
> do the trick). That could add as little as $5 to your BOM, even in
> single-unit quantities.
>
>
> - Dave
>
I used an Actel SmartFusion FPGA to connect to the I/O bus in a PDP-8 and
emulate a paper tape reader. The time sensitive bus interface logic was
programmed into the FPGA. The built in ARM Cortex M3 runs uC Linux with a
device driver to talk to the FPGA logic and a small application to supply
the paper tape image.
You could do the same and put the disk controller logic in the FPGA and
have an application running under Linux to supply the read/write data
functions. You could use the same disk image that the emulators use and
store it in flash.
--
Michael Thompson
> You really want some hardware to preprocess the signals somewhat.
Has anyone considered using a DSP?
> Also keep in mind that those ARM SOCs as used on the RPi
> or Beaglebone Black have some rather sophisticated DMA
> capable SPI, PWM, ... peripherals.
It's more expensive that something like a Beagleboard, but TI has a line of
ARM processor + TMS320 DSP chips (like the TMS320C66x series) that seem
like a perfect fit for this application. Use the DSP portion to
capture/pre-process the bitstream and the ARM to interpret, structure and
store it.
Just a thought.
KJ