test-drb July 2019

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

138 participants
116 discussions

Box of HP 1000 series MUX cards - 12040

by jesse＠cypress-tech.com

If anyone wants 87 HP 1000 series mux cards for gold or to play around with, I'm starting to clean house. The ebay link is below. https://www.ebay.com/itm/383039137321

5 years, 5 months

Margaret Hamilton Guardian interview.

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Richard Loken > I have never heard of her before and had no idea. There are two books from participants in the development of the AGC software (both of which I highly recommend) which mention her: Hugh Blair-Smith, "Left Brains for the Right Stuff: Computers, Space, and History", Sdp Publishing, East Bridgewater, 2015 Don Eyles, "Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir", Fort Point Press, Boston, 2017 The latter has somewhat grumpy note (pg. 342) which points out that she was only appointed to a management role in early 1970, after the first landing. It also points out that Hal Laning originated the concepts of "asynchronous software" and "priority scheduling". Eldon C. Hall's excellent project history, "Journey to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Guidance Computer" (which covers both h/w and s/w) doesn't mention her. Noel

5 years, 5 months

5 1/4 diskettes available

by guykd＠optusnet.com.au

>They confirmed my order. Fingers crossed they actually ship them, and it doesn't >turn into an argument about honoring transactions. Though probably, a higher postage >cost would be fair. 88 floppies and covers will weigh a bit. (Should have bought 100.) >4 Pack of 5.25" Floppy Diskettes with Sleeves >COM1147 22 $0.89 $19.58 >Subtotal: $19.58 >Shipping & Handling: $6.95 >Tax: $0.00 >Order Total: $26.53 They DID ship them. Just received notice of shipment. You know, the postage from Garland, Texas to LA, CA for a box of 88 floppies would have been more than $6.95. How much more, I don't know. Could they have made a loss on that transaction, hence the price bump? > That's not the same BG Micro we bought stuff from in the > early 80's, is it? > bill >The one with the yellow photocopied catalog? That's the same one. >The owner/founder passed away a year or two ago and I believe his daughter is running it now. >Will Can anyone estimate the likely US postage for that package? Please let me know. If BG Micro are badly out on that transaction, I'll contact them and make it up to them. Would not if it was some big corp, but BG Micro are clearly honest. Such a rarity. Funny, I was thinking of Diogenes and his lantern just the other day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes Guy

5 years, 5 months

Seeking documentation for Tallgrass Technologies "Shortcut"

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Hi, All, Another recent find, a Tallgrass Technologies "Shortcut", 80286 upgrade for 8-bit PCs. I've found several reviews online but no docs and no software (to enable the onboard 16K cache). One thing that concerns me is that on this unit, the 24-pin socket at U18 is empty. It might be nothing. This one does not have the memory daughtercard on J1, so perhaps they are related. If anyone has docs or has one and could tell me if their U18 is empty (and if not, what goes there), that would be great. Thanks! -ethan

5 years, 5 months

Posting of set of boards from a data General nova 3 triple option

by jeffreybirkin＠hotmail.com

I have a set of boards from a data General nova 3 triple option Location: Vancouver Island Canada If interested please email Jeffreybirkin at hotmail.com Sent from my iPhone

5 years, 5 months

What connector is this?

by mattislind＠gmail.com

I am looking for the mating male connector. Anyone that has an idea what connector this is? There is nothing indicated on the connector itself about what the manufacturer it is. https://i.imgur.com/YzAfB2g.png /Mattis

5 years, 5 months

Anyone have any docs on Termiflex handheld terminals?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Hi, All, I recently picked up an item I've been looking for for quite some time, a handheld configuration "terminal" for a LeCroy 1440 HV chassis, called a "Model 1447 Local Diagnostic Controller". It's superficially like the DEC hand-held used in the field for internal RA81 diagnostics but it's not the same model. The 1447 is described in the 1440 docs, so I have the pinout (DA-15 with TxD and RxD on pins 2 and 3, plus ground and +5V on certain pins). A sticker on my 1447 indicates it's a "Termiflex" product but all I can find online are pictures and docs from the later LCD display units. This one has a 1x16 LED alpha display. Does anyone have any docs on older LED Termiflex units? Again, I have the pinout but I'm curious about the innards. Unfortunately, the 4 case latches are difficult to unlock without some magic shim tool or I'd just open mine and reverse-engineer the PCB (there are four 2mm x 8mm slots with some sort of metal barbs at the bottom that seem to need a specific tool to open - a small blade has been unhelpful so far). Pinouts (cf J3) https://prep.fnal.gov/catalog/hardware_info/lecroy/high_voltage/images/fig2… >From the LANL docs for the 1440 I've found so far, it's unclear at the moment if TxD and RxD are +/-12V or +5V and GND but that's easy to check on the TxD line before I put anything on the RxD line. Thanks for any info. -ethan

5 years, 5 months

KL10-A/KL10-B differences

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Eric Smith > two separate backplanes that are combined for the RH20s (if > present), one backplane for the A through D positions (upper 2/3 of > each module slot), and one for E and F. How odd. DEC was quite happy to do hex backplanes elsewhere, and it looks >from the photo (EK-108OU-PD-002, pg. 3-8) like the MASSBUS connector are wired to both backplanes, so they had to stay together. >> On the -PA to -PV upgrade, could the backplane really be done with >> some wraps? I ask because I saw in one manual, talking about a >> KL10-C to -PV upgrade, it calls for a backplane swap-out. EK-0KL20-IN-001 ("KL10-Based DECSystem-20 Installation Manual"), in Section 10.2 "KL10-PV Upgrade Procedure for KL10-C", if anyone wants to look. > I'm not entirely sure, so I easily could have been mistaken. I know > -PV to -PW just needs some wraps. -PA to -PV may have required more > significant backplane changes. Definitely they have different part > numbers for the -PA and -PV backplane assemblies. Yeah, DEC was quite happy to have the FS guys do wirewrap on install (e.g. for the NIA20). So my guess is that if the default upgrade for at least one -PA to -PV (above) was to replace the backplane, that would have been the standard way, because of some issue. Whether it was just too many wires to do manually, or if there were also trace issues, it would be interesting to know. Oh, it's also possible that since the -PA to -PV involved a faster clock, I wonder if some backplane lines turned into twisted pair, or coax? Noel

5 years, 5 months

16-bit ISA tape controllers

by sales＠elecplus.com

These do not come available very often. Not affiliated with seller, etc. WTS EVEREX SYSTEMS PCT04, REF, qty 5, CALL, TAPE CONTROLLER 16 BIT ISA Sajjad Mukhi Sales/purchasing FML Computers Inc Phone: 407-637-2922 Toll: 407-637-2922 Fax: 407-362-7826 Cell: 407-718-8778 Mukhi at fml-computers.com Cindy Croxton Electronics Plus 1613 Water Street Kerrville, TX 78028 830-370-3239 cell sales at elecplus.com --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

5 years, 5 months

RALGOL - A PDP8 ALGOL 60

by boris＠summitclinic.com

Thanks for that link Charles and also thanks to Mark Kahrs for obituary on Roger Abbott. I started out on PDP-8 in 1968 which was the first time I had hands on access to a computer at UofCalgary. Would have loved to have had access to one when I did my MSc in neurophysiology in 1975 but obviously Oxford in 1972 had much better funding than Uof0 (University of Ottawa). Roger Abbott had a PDP-8 to acquire data from his insect muscle preparations and noticed that 1972 Journal of Physiology papers no longer behind a paywall when was looking what type of research he was doing. Uof0 was still using rotating smoked drum cylinders to record muscle twitches in some labs and the lab I was in had a high speed oscilloscope camera which one could use to shoot long strips of neuron spike activigy >from a mouse cerebellar culture. A technician was available to measure the time intervals between spikes and that's how I was supposed to do my project to look for connections between simultaneously recorded cells in the cultures. My request for a computer was denied and I was given $200 to build an electronic device to time the spikes and send them to the Uof0 360 mainframe where my FORTRAN code generated cross-correlograms and other neat graphs on a line printer http://drgimbarzevsky.com/Computers/UofOTerminal/TerminalCircuitBoards1.html Despite comments that I seemed to be working on a graduate degree in electrical engineering rather than neurophysiology, what I learned doing large scale TTL state-machine devices was invaluable when I moved to Vancouver and worked at UBC Pharmacology where lab computers were the norm and did my last bit of PDP-8 programming on a PDP-12 to speed up gathering data from a mouse diaphragm preparation which was easily done by rewriting the whole thing in PDP-8 and Link-8 assembler. The researcher whose machine it was used FOCAL for everything which made for horrendously slow data analysis. That done, I finally got to play on what I still view as one of the best computers ever made, the PDP-11. Fortunately at UBC there were a lot of researchers who mixed writing code and building their own hardware with doing their electrophysiologic experiments. That was a neat time when dicussions we'd have were whether a particular bit of data acquisition was to be done with optimized assembler code vs building our own dedicated board which would plug into Unibus on 11/34. I liked the latter approach but it was easier to debug PDP-11 ASM than chasing down bugs on a custom interface board having to spend time writing custom diagnostics to see if things were really working as designed. Have an old Algol book around from early 1970's and remember reading it then but liked FORTRAN more but most of my code was FORTRAN calling PDP-11 ASM functions on a PDP-11. All my PDP-8 programs from early 1970's are on paper tape and have never been transferred to other media. Algol 60 looks interesting enough to use given compact code and neat architecture that will try running it on PDP-8 simulator someday. Problem with simulators is that almost all of PDP-8 and PDP-11 code I wrote was to interface to A/D's and D/A's or parallel ports to run experiments. Once got a C64, wrote graphing code in C64 Basic and photographed my TV which was way faster than writing code in PDP-11 ASM to display graphs and data on oscilloscope screen from D/A's. Got into VB once PC's were cheaper than Macs and notice there's a lot of VB5 and VB6 code on Roger Abbott's final code. VB6 is something I still use and once I get my VB6 code running under Wine, windoze will be a distant memory. Was neat to see where other physiologists had been in early 1970's where it seemed I spend more time building the tools I needed to get the data I wanted than to do the experiments. Boris Gimbarzevsky >I played around with this algol 60 compiler for the PDP8 and succeeded in >getting it to run. I have not found any other notes, so I thought that I >would give a leg up to the next one that wants to work on it. > >-chuck > >-------- > >This ALGOL 60 implementation for the PDP8 was written by Roger H. Abbott >while he was at Oxford. > >The bits are here: >http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp8/papertapeImages/russ.ucs.indiana.edu… > >A copy of the manual here: >https://archive.org/details/hack42_ROG_ALGOL_Compiler > >A paper here: >http://pdp8.de/download/RogAlgol.pdf > >Mr. Abbotts business is here: >http://www.angelfire.com/biz/rhaminisys/index.html > >The website or the host is a bit sketchy. The business is probably defunct. >I found a link that said Mr. Abbott died in the early 2000. > >The system is two parts: the compiler and the runtime. > >This is all assuming the use of OS/8. > >To create the SV file for the compiler: >.R ABSLDR >*INTRUN.BN,ALGCOM.BN,COMOS8.BN$ >.SAVE SYS:ALGCOM.SV >.R ALGCOM.SV > >To create the SV file for the runtime system/loader: >.R ABSLDR >*FPP.BN,ALGRUN.BN,RUNOS8.BN >.SAVE SYS:RALGOL.SV >.R RALGOL.SV > >There are other options for the FPP.BN for other hardware possibilities. >FPEAE8.BN for the classic pdp8 EAE and FPPEAE.BN for the PDP8/e EAE. This >needs some testings. > >Running an ALGOL program: > >.TYPE FLOAT.AL >'BEGIN' > 'REAL' A,B; > TEXT(1,"HELLO WORLD!"); > SKIP(1); > A := 3.141592; > B := COS(A); > TEXT(1,"A = "); > RWRITE(1,A); > SKIP(1); > TEXT(1,"B = COS(A) = "); > RWRITE(1,B); >'END' >$$$$$ > >.R ALGCOM > >ROGALGOL MK40 >OUT<IN*FLOAT<FLOAT > >SIZE 39 > >.R RALGOL > >ROGALGOLOADER >INPUT FILENAME ?*FLOAT.AC > >ENDS 0251 >^^PHELLO WORLD! >A = +0.314159E+001 >B = COS(A) = -0.999999E+000 >^^PHELLO WORLD! >A = +0.314159E+001 >B = COS(A) = -0.999999E+000 >^^C >. > >The source AL file must end with a few $$$$ or an odd fault code will >result. The fault codes are embedded in the source files as addresses. > >The compiler output file has the AC suffix. > >After the loader runs it will pause with a ^ prompt and the user will have >to enter a ^P to proceed or ^C to quit. > >The manual is the best description for the user.

5 years, 5 months

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test-drb July 2019