hello all,
I'm in the process of repairing our 101 but i hit a solid wall finding
out whats wrong with it. are there people with a working copy who could
do some measurements on their copy?
Unfortunately i have no schematic of the electronics, only the mechanics
and PSU.
I have made a crappy video of the scope trace of the delay line input
and i'm very interested in a video of a working machine's delay line. :-)
The video is here: http://youtu.be/llpwjGeldt0
and a partially repairlog is here:
https://hack42.nl/wiki/Repair_Olivetti_Programma_101
als scematics are welcome as well. :-)
--
Met vriendelijke Groet,
Simon Claessen
drukknop.nl
Long shot, but does anyone know of any available disk/tape/paper tape/ROM images for any of the Microdata machines (800/1600) or the relatives (Intertechnique Multi-8/Multi-4, MAI Basic Four BB-II)?
There?s a bit of documentation available - Bitsavers has a bit, and I have some MAI documentation that I?m in the process of scanning. I?m toying with the idea of emulating this machine, but I?m having difficulty locating any software for it.
Thanks in advance.
Ian
> From: Brent Hilpert
> Well, try removing W1 to isolate the output of the xtal oscillator E15
> from inverter input pin E4.4.
Thanks! Too late to try it today, but first thing tomorrow..
It seems like every time you answer one of my queries, I smack my forehead
and say 'That's an excellent idea! Why didn't _I_ think of that!?!?' :-)
> If you're not familiar with them, E15 is an integrated xtal oscillator,
> not just a crystal - the crystal and oscillator logic are both in that
> can
I'm not familiar, so thanks for the tip. Wonder where I'll find one if that's
what's bad... :-)
> Could also (with W1 removed) pull E4.4 hi/lo while watching the
> inverter output E4.16 to see if it responds correctly with the
> inversion.
Since it's a tri-state, I may need to hit the enable somehow. Oh, wait, I
see, it's hard-wired on via a pull-down. (I wonder why they needed a
pull-down? And I wonder what the test point is there for?) And I guess I need
like a 5K series pull-up resistor to +5, right? (Ground I can just tie
directly, right?)
Anyway, thanks again for the help - very, very useful.
Noel
> From: Eric Smith
> The memory controller does have a Unibus port, but the Fastbus memory
> modules are not on the Unibus any more than an RP04 disk drive is on
> the Unibus.
Ah, OK, I guess it all depends on exactly what one means by 'directly'... :-)
I was using it in a high-level architectural sense: there's a 1:1
correspondence between UNIBUS addresses and Fastbus memory addresses; a
UNIBUS read/write cycle completes immediately with the contents of that cell;
etc - all quite different from the RP0x example. IOW, at a very high level,
it looks like other 'memory on the UNIBUS'.
> To a first approximation, the two Unibuses are *always* jumpered
> together.
I seem to recall reading (don't remember where, it was a long time ago) of
some place that actually made use of the dual UNIBUS thing; they hung some
other PDP-11 (don't recall what kind) off UNIBUS B, and ran a primitive
multi-processor. It was some sort of high-speed data acquisition, or perhaps
a real-time simulator - something like that.
Anyone else know of any place that used the dual UNIBUS capability?
Noel
Hello cctalk'ers,
Hopefully this message won't offend anyone --- I recognize that I might,
and I apologize in advance if it does.
As many of you know, I've been in the vintage computing hobby for about
a decade. The first person I met was Sellam Ismail. He helped guide me
as a newb collector of handheld/pocket computers.
Somehow that led to me co-founding MARCH, publishing a 1,000-subscriber
newsletter for a few years, rescuing a mainframe here and there, making
the VCF East into a premier event, and becoming a "talking head"
everywhere from BBC Radio to the Wall Street Journal. (My personal site
is www.snarc.net if you really want to know more ... bring popcorn.)
Now I'm asking for some personal help from the community.
I'm trying something radical: crowd funding, so that I can finally
finish the decade-long project of writing my book about the history of
mobile computing.
You can imagine how frustrated I feel when telling my family "I'm in the
The Wall Street Journal!" but that I'm also dangerously under-employed
(having been spit out of the technical journalism field after 16 years).
It does not compute.
Please visit this link for more information:
http://fundrazr.com/campaigns/3wNcc.
Thank you,
- Evan
> From: Chuck Guzis
> Any more so, than, say, William Gardner Pfann?
Another name I didn't recognize - I knew there was someone who did zone
refining, and that it was critical, but didn't know the name.
> From: Jon Elson
> The XX system?? What's that?
You likely already know of this, just not under this name; here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-Cross_System
Briefly, during WWII, the British ran the entire German espionage system in
the UK; initially, only for counter-intelligence purposes, but later on, to
actively feed the Germans disinformation.
> Another really great story is the X gerat, (X equipment in English)
> that sent narrow, high frequency radio beams over England.
For anyone who hasn't read it, I highly recommend R. V. Jones' book, "The
Wizard War" - it covers all the various navigation systems (on both sides),
and much more. I can also recommend "The Secret War", by Brian Johnson (the
companion book to a BBC series), which covers that, radar, the V-weapons,
code-breaking, and much more.
> From: Johnny Billquist
>> stored-program (in the sense of 'one memory holds both instructions
>> and data')
> What do you mean by "stored program" then?
Err... :-)
Noel
On Wed, 11 Feb 2015 18:04:58 -0500 (EST)
Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, Roe Peterson wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Feb 11, 2015, at 4:16 PM, Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, Al Kossow wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On 2/11/15 1:56 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
> >>>> netbooting NetBSD (install doable for that one.)
> >>>
> >>> You'll need to put something together that can talk to the raw
> >>> scsi interface and issue your own read commands. Are they common
> >>> command set drives?
> >>
> >> Should be. I don't believe CompuServe did anything too silly.
> >
> > What, actually, is the blocksize? 1024 or ?
> >
>
> 576 or 2304.
The "scu" utility, which is available for both NT and linux
environments can change the blocksize - and scads of other parameters
on most SCSI disks. It's powerful enough that you can brick a drive
if you're not careful ;)
I used to buy NOS Tandem SCSI HDD dirt cheap because they had a weird
blocksize that would make Windows/Linux systems barf. I would then
use "scu" to change the blocksize parameter of the drive to 512 - and do
a low level format. Then I'd have a "standard" SCSI HDD for a fraction
of the price of a "standard" drive.
Of course you could change the blocksize of a drive to 576 - or
anything you wanted - and then do a low level format for that blocksize.
You can pickup scu for NT and linux (including help and summary pdfs)
by anonymous ftp to my website via certain browsers or:
ftp bickleywest.com
user: anonymous
password: your email address
cd scu
....
Regards,
Lyle
--
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
http://bickleywest.com
"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"
On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, B Degnan wrote:
> > via trial and error, and a lot of reading. I believe that loading the
> > bootstrap manually is a must; one cannot use or create tapes
otherwise.
>
> Only if your drum memory loses its contents. I don't know if SIMH has a
> concept of non-volatile main storage (drum, core). And for the LGP-30,
all
> registers are non-volatile, too.
When I fire up the SIMH and check 6300 we have
00000000
If the bootstrap came pre-loaded the first instruction of bootstrap should
be in 6300 and read
10000000
so, no unless the bootstrap is somewhere other than where I think it should
be, memory is completely blank when SIMH is loaded.
> > In order to enter instructions into memory I first learned how to
translate
> > code from the various actual papertape sources, for example...
> >
> > "flexowriter entry"> 6300 P 0000'
> >
> > becomes
> >
> > sim> d -a 6300 10000000
>
> Urks, that's sick... but SIMH should offer the possibility to enter the
> mnemonics and addresses (or anything else since everything is mapped to
> its four bit code) like
> sim> d -a 3w00 p0000 (or d -a 6300 p0000
sim> d -a 3w00 p0000
Invalid argument
The SIMH *should* accept mnemonics ... Believe me I tried EVERYTHING ...
but unless there are hidden command switches you have to convert your code
to machine format. Scoured the entire C source code looking for clues.
:-)
<snip>
> sim> g 3w00
g is not a legal command. You have to tell SIMH to execute with a "SET CPU
[command]"
>
> Anyways, SIMH is not very well suited for machines like an LGP-30 where
> the user interaction with typewriter and console buttons for operation is
> imperative. The SIMH version does officially work, but it is not really
> user friendly in this case.
Tell me about it. I have written to the SIMH user group, so far I have not
received a reply with tips/testing done to verify "officially work"
boundaries.
> But the best would be if you use a drum image with 10.4 (the monitor)
> already loaded, i.e. save the memory contents to a file and reload it on
> the next incarnation of SIMH (there's a "START" drum containing 10.4 in
my
> simulator package, and an "ACT5" drum with preloaded ACT-V and
> subroutines, these may be usable in SIMH, but I don't know).
>
> > repertoire. The hardest part is finding ways to enter Flexowriter key
> > input via a modern keyboard, using SIMH commands.
>
> By using a simulator that offers the right frontend to the user (i.e.
keys
> and buttons as required by the machine operations) *g*
>
> Christian
Christian....I am going to keep at it and then script a bootstrap that will
load in SIMH, or convert tapes to SIMH format so they can be imported. I
can see why you did what you did with your simulator. Makes a lot of sense
to use function keys.
Here is the bootstrap I am working to complete. I need to find equivalents
to the Flexowriter commands, I have finished the memory insert commands,
please send suggestions if you have them.
sim> [first cpu fill c6300 in IR?]
sim> d -a 6300 10000000
sim> d -a 6301 01000000
sim> d -a 6302 11016305
sim> d -a 6303 10000000
sim> d -a 6304 01000000
here is where I need to experiment, the code below is my first attempt:
6305 (skip)
6306 10106300
6307 10000000
6308 01000000
6309 (skip O.G.W.C flexo keys, still need to convert)
6310 00016346
6311 11116326
6312 10106322
6313 00000000
6314 10100000
6322 10116313
6323 11006309
6324 11016346
6325 10106307
6326 000wwwwj (entered into by flexowr., need to convert)
6346 0gwc0000 (entered into by flexor, need to convert)
Bill
> From: Chuck Guzis
> The point is that a lot of people were responsible for the development
> of mechanical computation (I include electrical and electronic in this
> definition).
Just like the Internet... :-)
> In fact, it could be argued that the ball-and-disc integrator was more
> responsible for the eventual Allied victory in WWII than Turing's work
> was.
Sorry, are you referring to his work on computers, or his work in code-breaking
too? If this latter, I would have to disagree.
Respected military historians have suggested (of course, such alternative
history is always speculative, one can't prove it) that the code-breaking work
of the Allies shortened WWII by up to two years. I doubt mechanical
fire-control computers (which is the primary military use of ball-and-disc
integrators, as I understand it) had that significant an effect.
> From: Johnny Billquist
> And once more noone mentions Konrad Zuse, which in my mind beat them
> all
Well, two things. (And don't get me wrong, I admire Zuse and his work.)
First, Zuse's work didn't really have much impact. You may disagree, but my
sense is that if that bomb that destroyed the Z1 had gotten him too, the
post-WWII world would still look pretty much like the real one.
Second, his early machines (Z1-Z3) weren't stored-program (in the sense of
'one memory holds both instructions and data'). Yes, yes, I know the Z3 can
(with a monstrous kludge) be Turing-complete, but it still wasn't
stored-program - which to my mind, is _the_ key aspect of a real 'computer'.
Interestingly enough, Babbage's machines weren't stored-program either; they
had separate instruction and data tapes, like Zuse's (although they had
conditional branching, which the Z1-Z3 didn't). Turing's invention of thex
stored-program in 'On Computable Numbers' was really a fundamental leap.
Noel
