As something went wrong in posting this question, I try to repost it
here. please don't be offended by this.
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Hi all.
is there a list of equivalents for DEC ic's?
I've made a mistake in attaching our BA-8 to the PDP8/f and plugged in
the ribbon cable connecting connector C and D the wrong way. some magic
smoke came loose and there are a few chips broken .
by comparing the signals on those connectors, I made a list of suspect
chips on which some pins got-15v or +15v...
The M8330 board got most of the blast, resulting in 4 burned chips, but
other boards could well be affected.
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--
Met vriendelijke Groet,
Simon Claessen
drukknop.nl
for both serial ports I can configure a terminal session at my Wyse 370
ASCII terminal. But I don't have any idea how to switch between
sessions. Any idea or any hint where I can find a manual for this terminal?
for both serial ports I can configure a terminal session at my Wyse 370
ASCII terminal. But I don't have any idea how to switch between
sessions. Any idea or any hint where I can find a manual for this terminal?
Absolutely (assuming you count your engineering time as free), not to
mention it feels rewarding to use clever engineering tricks to solve a
problem instead of money. But I want to keep my machine original and vintage
if I reasonably can. My programmer ended up very reasonably priced, and it
is recognized as one of the better vintage programmers of that era. So it
fits perfectly in my collection of higher end, historically meaningful
engineering tools. Two birds with one stone, so it was a pretty easy
decision.
Marc
>Sean Caron <scaron at umich.edu>:
>The median listing price for them on eBay for a 29B with pack seems to be
around $3-400 which IMO is a little steep for a 30+ year >old PROM
programmer. Hopefully your best offer successfully accepted was much lower!
>I think the part cost on the PROMs pales in comparison. For the cost of the
29B, you could design a replacement for the original >PROM, have some boards
fabricated, stuff them and you'd still be ahead a few hundred bucks ...
>starts to make sense at those kind of prices, imo.
>Best,
>Sean
William Degan wrote:
Comparing the 160 and 160-A manuals with the 160 in the ebay auction
(252070822992)
Page 37 of the 160 manual from 1960 - smaller "160" marquee sign.
Page 3-1 of the 160-A marquee says "CONTROL DATA 160-A"
Ebay auction says "CONTROL DATA 160"
So, there were two variations of the 160 marquee/sign above the numeric
display.
----
Also, if a person is looking at the front of the computer, on the top left
side, there is a square cut-out / slot? in the original 160 table
(purpose?). This slot does not appear on the 160-A's table (from the 1963
programming manual), nor is it present on the Ebay auction.
I am thinking this was originally a "later" 160 that was probably serviced
well into the 160-A days.
--
Bill
vintagecomputer.net
Only a few 160s used the 3 small inserts in the marquee. There were used to make it easier for the NCR rebrand. The later solid sign became the CDC standard.
The cut out on the left was for the BPRE-11 punch. Only the early 160's and early 1604 machines had this. The punch table was spring loaded and could be raised up to the desk top to reload paper tape. Later on, the punch was mounted on a tray that slid out to the front.
Another change was the replacment of the original paper tape reader with the PED 350. PED (Peripheral Equipment Division) was a CDC created company. Their first product was the 350 reader. Later, they made the 60X series of tape units and the 405 card reader. This was all part of CDC's effort to move away from other companys' peripherals. The early CDC systems shipped with Ampex tape units, IBM card equipment.
The original paper tape reader was an inport from Ferranti in England. It was fascinating; used thyratrons as light sensors. I had one, but it disappeared in the last move. You can tell it from the 350 by the paper tape load arm. On the Ferranti, it is a steel rod. On the PED 350, it is a flattened V shaped plastic arm.
Another way to tell early 160s from later units is the side drops. On the early units, the top formica also went down the left and right side about 12 inches. This stopped mid-life. Old memoriy says at s/n 43 but after 55 years, that is not hard data.
The early 1604's also had this side drop of the desk top. You can see it in some early photographs. I did see one 161 typewriter stand with the side drop, but don't remember if it went into production.
NO 160s were ever converted to 160-As. Not one. There are physical differences in the logic chassis. More cards slots were needed. The extra 4K bank of memory takes up a lot card space. The front panel would have to be totally replaced. The 160-A requires a lot more cable ports for the Buffer channel and the external memory (169).
160-A manuals would be useless for a 160. The card types are the same and about half the commands are the same. But that is it.
By the way, bitsavers has an excellent description of the 160 in "System Programs For The 160 Computer". It includes a photograph showing the above differences. And pages 1 - 10 present good insight to Seymour Cray's thinking about his next machine, the 6600. It shows where the idea for the PPUs came from.
The obsolete 160s were in use for many years after their demise. Usually for testing peripherals, copying paper tapes, etc. I last worked on one in 1980, almost twenty years after it was built.
Billy Pettit
>Not sure what you mean by membrane keypad. My front panels certainly
>have real buttons, which makes a clicking noise and feeling when I press
>them. But maybe I'm confused and there is some membrane behind the keys
>or something?
>
>Johnny
That's my mistake. I've never actually seen or touched a DKC8-AA panel, just
pictures of them in the manual :)
Hoping to acquire one since I am trying to do other things with the 8/A than
keep debugging its hardware! (such as getting Dumprest working for RL02).
>The 74f parts may be too fast. Try adding damping resistors (10 to 30 ohms)
>in series with the outputs to slow things down or just switch to 74ls
>
>Joe
Thanks for the tip. That is what I was implying, not sure I said so
explicitly :)
But adding twelve resistors which may or may not fix the problem, and
hacking up my board is not an attractive thought... but neither is changing
three 20-pin unsocketed DIPs without proper desoldering equipment. Guess I
should have used sockets in a prototype!
Besides, the board really does need redoing with proper power and ground
plane management.
-Charles
..the Subject says all.. I'm looking for the Formater Utility
for an Emulx QD01 ..preferably for the PDP11/RT11.
The Manual
http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/emulex/QD0151001-C-QD01_Di…
lists the Part Numbers for the Software as PX995180x-0y where x is 1 or 2
and y is between 1-4, dependig of the distribution tapei media. A RX50 Floppy
with the PN VX9951804 should exist too..
Has someone images from that software handy?
Regards,
Holm
--
Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe,
Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583
www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741
Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: Control Data 160 Ebay
I believe the eBay lister stated that it was a 160, not the -A. So no
return jump for you...
--Chuck
Which would make it even more scarce. There were only a little over a 100 of the 160 models made. And 40+ of them were rebranded as NCR machines.
There were 495 160-As made officially. (There were also a small number shipped without serial numbers to the good people at Langley.)
I know of at least 5x 160-As still in existence, besides my own. Which should be going to a museum this week if they can sort out shipping glitches. My system includes a 161-A Typewriter in lousy shape and a 167-2 Card Reader in perfect shape. Plus all manuals, software (with listings) and spare parts. Even the paper tape rewinder!
I did not know any 160 machines survived, so who ever bought it has a unique item.
I have looked for 15 years for an 8092 = the first true 8 bit computer. Haven't found even a hint or rumor of one.
I am working with Al Kossow, to see that this material is eventually in his archives.
Billy Pettit
The original proprietor of Zendex has put the firmware of the ZX-200A
in the public domain, so I've put my reverse-engineered source code on
Github:
https://github.com/brouhaha/zx200a-fw
The ZX-200A is a single-board Multibus floppy controller intended for
Intel MDS (including Series II and Series III) development systems,
replacing either or both the Intel dual-board SBC 201 single-density
and SBC 202 double-density floppy controllers. Since it can do both
densities, it can replace both Intel controllers simultaneously,
allowing the same floppy drives to be used for either density, by
using different logical drive numbers. We take it for granted that
"modern" floppy controllers often support selectable density, but with
those early Intel board-level floppy controllers that wasn't the case.
Also, the Intel SBC 202 double-density controller uses an
Intel-proprietary M2FM disk format, instead of IBM-compatible MFM. As
such, none of the single-chip FDCs are compatible with it, with the
possible exception of the Western Digital 1781 (with a huge pile of
external support logic), and (less likely) the TI TMS9909.
Unfortunately the original ZX-200A manual, which contained the
schematics and source code, is not available, hence my project to
reverse-engineer it. I'm working on tracing out the schematic, but as
the board has 82 chips it is slow going.
Several years ago, Vince Slyngstad and I "cloned" the rare DKC8-AA
Programmer's Panel for PDP-8 with some improvements (0.6 vs. 0.3" LED
displays, real "click" buttons instead of that membrane keypad, and fixed a
couple of bugs in the original design). Also, since 8235's were scarce even
then, we used 74F244 buffers instead to gate the input vs. output of the
switch register onto the bus back to the M8316 Option 1 board.
That may have caused a lurking problem, since occasionally the SR will
change bits when an address is loaded. Turns out an oscillation starts on
the ground lines at about 20 MHz with certain entries at the keypad to LSR
and LA (I can't see an obvious pattern). This parasitic is large enough (up
to 2V p-p with respect to the chassis/rack) that it's clocking the D-flops
used as the physical switch register! It can be seen in the 7-segment
displays as a "flicker" which will change when I touch the ground on the
board... attempts to add more grounds actually made the problem worse!
I'm thinking of redoing the board layout with better attention to ground
planes/power buses. There's a .01 uf decoupling cap at every IC and 12 out
of 40 pins on each of the two connecting ribbon cables are dedicated to
ground. 7 on one, 5 on the other are for +5 volts.
On the other hand, I am tired of tinkering and considering just buying a
real DKC8-AA if there's one out there. Anyone? ;)
-Charles
