> From: Sean Caron
> Many examples of blinkenlights eye candy throughout computer history
It wasn't _just_ eye candy; it was a real help in problem debugging (when the
machine was stopped), and you could tell a lot about what the machine was
doing (when it was running) from the way the lights changed.
When the overall machine cost came down, they were too expensive to be worth
what they cost, though.
Speaking of lights for feedback, anyone remember the 'run bar' - or whatever
they called it, my memory fails me - on the display on the Lisp Machines?
Actually, it was a series, IIRC - one for the CPU, one for the disk, etc. The
machine didn't have LEDs, but it used short lines on the bit-map display
instead.
IIRC, the idea was copied from the Knight TV's on MIT-AI. (Which I believe
were the first-ever bit-mapped displays - anyone know of an earlier one?)
Noel
Hi,
My search for any info on a Grid Systems 2260 Convertible Laptop/Tablet has so far been unsuccessful. I am looking for a user manual / repair manual / ads etc. Any help/pointers would be greatly appreciated. Also, if anyone has a power supply and/or accessories for this that they are willing to part with, please contact me off-list
thanks
--
alex
I am selling off my last PDP-1 replica front panel. This is a fully
functional replica PDP-1 front panel attached to the SIMH PDP-1 simulator
running on a PC via a custom interface. It functions almost exactly like
an actual PDP-1 front panel. You can deposit code/data from the front
panel switches into the simulator memory, read it out by the same, and use
the function switches to load virtual "paper tape".
This is a fully assembled unit, ready for play. Comes with the simulator
PC. Just add a monitor and you have yourself as close to a working PDP-1
as you're probably ever going to get.
Photos/videos and other data available upon request.
Ships from Livermore, California, or you pick up for free tutorial.
Shipping costs should be no more than $60 for ground.
Asking price is $3,800.
--
Sellam ibn Abraham VintageTech
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. The truth is always simple.
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From: Sherman Foy
> Re: the 12, you were either in LINC mode or PDP mode at any given time.
> These were NOT "parallel processors".
I don't disagree. I was speaking of the LINC-8, which was a very different
machine inside - it really was an 8 _and_ a LINC in a single box. The front
console actually had a complete PDP-8 console _and_ a complete LINC console,
side by side - two sets of lights, two sets of switches, etc.
> I can't vouch for this on a LINC-8 machine, but I thought it was similar.
Nope. Check out the manual I cited. Well, the LINC-8 and -12 might be similar
(almost identical, probably) from the _programming_ point of view, but the
hardware was organized totally differently (above).
Noel
Dug back in my mailbox and Richard Cornwell was looking at this circa 2008-11. There was
some work by JAM to OCR the listings. I don't remember if it was greenbar, and if the background
was causing problems. The color scanner I use now does color dropout but it would be a PITA to
rescan everything.
> From: Jay Jaeger
> I am going to attempt to do the same for IBM's 1410 computer - a really
> big effort.
Now, the IBM machine you (or someone) should _really_ do is the IBM Stretch
(7030); although judged a commercial failure at the time, in retrospect it's
clearly one of the most ground-breaking designs of all time. (In fact, I have
a hard time coming up with other machines with the same level of
impact/influence, in terms of CPU internal architecture. Maybe Atlas, or the
801?)
Noel
ATT has gone wierded out on attachments for the moment, so I'm dumping all this into a long text ramble
Jim:
Please forward these observations to the appropriate parties, copying me. I am having trouble sorting out who started the thread and who is receiving replies.
I will respond directly to anyone w/ questions, to the best of my ability and experience. I believe that I see some discrepancies, as I think others are also questioning some assumptions.
To: group
I own and did operate a PDP-12; having written unique PDP-12 code, I disagree: the 2 modes "ping-ponged". I think some of the thoughts here are based on reading the books and thinking in "hardware mode" and not considering actual operation or the software implementations.
I have done the full experience: ownership, hardware integration, commissioning, running and developing custom code of both PDP-12's and PDP-8's. I still own 1 PDP-12 and 4+ PDP-8's.
Re: the 12, you were either in LINC mode or PDP mode at any given time. These were NOT "parallel processors". You called the LINC IOT instruction to switch from PDP mode to LINC mode; then you "returned" to PDP mode by making the PDP call in LINC code. Usually, you briefly switched to LINC mode to run the peripherals. Most of the code that you ran was PDP code. The TU-55/6's needed LINC code and so did the VR-12, for instance.
It is possible that something written for the LINC would be run in LINC mode for high percentages of the time. That code might have some "patches" that ran in PDP mode after review and revision.
It could be that such code was modified from LINC code to a PDP-12 routine using the 12 as a "development system" to test and implement such patches.
The PDP-12 switch selected which mode you STARTED FROM, IIRC. Once you had launched and were running code, you had to switch via code calls in the routines.
I can't vouch for this on a LINC-8 machine, but I thought it was similar.
I wrote my own "Mag Tape Boot Loader" in my trials and tribulations while my 12 was running. The following is an excerpt from my account of that experience. Note the PDP versus LINC calls inline in the code.
<quote>
My Boot loader [MTBL] code used the followings syntax. It resided at the high end address of a page, was toggled in via Front Panel and a Front Panel "Start Switch" launched the code. It called the Mag Tape and rewrote itself over the corrupted memory. I think I had another routine to update the Mag Tape locations periodically, after rewrites.
I can't remember the LINC syntax and would have to look those up in the reference manuals. (Don't leave the launch address without them.)
Comments are posted after the code [in this case], to allow for inevitable corruption by non column friendly text machinery.
************************
* MAG TAPE BOOT LOADER *
************************
CLA
LINC
LIF 0
LDF 0
AXO
RCG
DATA
PDP
JMP I+1
DATA
Comments, added here due to not being in "column mode"
/MAG TAPE BOOT ROUTINE;
/MUST BE PRESENT IN TAPE
/BLOCK 273; WILL BE OVER-
/WRITTEN ON USE.
/WHEN CALLED THIS CODE READS
/TAPE BLOCKS 270-273 TO
/MEMORY BLOCKS 0-3.
/TO USE:
/ 1) LEFT SW TO 1760
/ 2) START LEFT SW
/RESTART ADDRESS
Sherman, 12 owner
shermanfoy at att.net
<endquote>
The longer narrative in a Word doc is attached.
A PDP-8 WILL NOT run LINC code: that is also by ownership & experience & hardware troubleshooting-debug & handwriting machine code. I did ALL of that in one session of working on a design flaw in the 8-E [also F & M] machines.
Again, the PDP-12 does not run the two modes CONCURRENTLY, rather they run CONSECUTIVELY. I am borrowing the legalese for terms of sentencing, as it lends itself well to this description.
And again, I am doing this from actual ownership and experience of getting hardware running, hand-coding and debugging custom routines. Of course, I did this after researching and reading instruction sets from the programming manuals and poring through sample code listings.
Further, as I previously mentioned, I cannot vouch these thoughts and descriptions for the LINC-8. If I understand this correctly, the "straight LINC" would also share the use of LINC only code characteristic w/ the PDP-8's use of the PDP only code characteristic.
My 12 is in storage and would be a "year out" to operation at any given time. That assumes that it has not suffered deterioration from its "put in storage running" status. It has always been stored in dry storage. Another major obstacle is simply finding the proper floorspace to mount its large footprint environmentally.
If I am encouraged and/or flogged, I may bring the 12 machine out of retirement. I expect that my path will be to launch a PDP-8M [perhaps a PDP-8E] first and then bring the PDP-12's VR-12 out and try to interface it w/ an IBM PC. There is a local "moral imperative" to resurrect SpaceWars :)
I also intend to try to make a TU-56HM STANDALONE Mag tape talk to the PC machine. The TU-56 Standalone mode is a rare beast and can be found in the FOOTNOTES on the TU-56 drawings. I do not believe there was a complete document for the Standalone machine. I seem to have the requisite TU-56 hardware, but I am not sure of the interfacing and cabling. Code would likely be written in C from a DOS environment on the PC.
This would, likely be analogous to some of the TU-58 modes of operation, which were based on serial ports. I also have several pieces of TU-58, including a VT-103 machine.
These projects could be described as ambitious. We need some more SoCal DECnutz.
<quote>
Then I discussed my 12 running time:
The "12 monster" had Core Memory, which, like an elephant, doesn't forget. It had about 100 pounds of Sola Constant Voltage Transformer. These combos are good for brownouts.
It had a Power Fail Auto Restart Option [PFAR, my acronym]. I learned the hard way on a PDP-11/44: don't screw with it and it will restore itself when the power come back.
Also, the power supply had three gigantic electrolytics, about the size of thermos bottles. These guys were significant fractions of a Farad 40 YEARS BEFORE SUPERCAPS. The decay rate of the power supply was fantastic. This provided major "headroom" on the RC time constant that the PFAR used. One thing done with this was to turnoff the Write Amps for the Core Memory on Power Fail detection.
All in all, blackout/brownout, the 12 was ready. I had a block level blackout happen and when the power came back on, restarted in "mid sentence" of the code I was bumming.
I wrote my own version of a "Monitor", that I called MON-12. It was based on ODT-8. I originally keyed it in from the front panel, hundreds of lines. I wrote the documentation as I went. I stripped out the Paper Tape stuff, since the 12 didn't have one and I would have to add an extra cabinet; later???
The 12 had two TU-55's. Tape-tape copy was an obvious feature. But I always wondered why they didn't use a TU-56 Dual Transport and put a Paper Tape in the main cabinet. I have two TU-56's and a stack of PC-0X's patiently waiting in the warehouse.
Somewhere along the way, I got to where I could edit from the keyboard. I also started work on an ambitious "block mode copy" function.
If you can see this coming, I developed code that would "eat itself". After toggling this in from the Front Panel three times, I decided to take a cue from the Paper Tape stuff I had removed from ODT. I wrote a Mag Tape Boot Loader [MTBL, my acronym]. The 12 implementation for the Mag Tape used LINC code, not a TU-55 IOT set of calls.
My Boot loader [MTBL] code used the followings syntax. It resided at the high end address of a page, was toggled in via Front Panel and a Front Panel "Start Switch" launched the code. It called the Mag Tape and rewrote itself over the corrupted memory. I think I had another routine to update the Mag Tape locations periodically, after rewrites.
I can't remember the LINC syntax and would have to look those up in the reference manuals. (Don't leave the launch address without them.)
Comments are posted after the code [in this case], to allow for inevitable corruption by non column friendly text machinery.
************************
* MAG TAPE BOOT LOADER *
************************
CLA
LINC
LIF 0
LDF 0
AXO
RCG
DATA
PDP
JMP I+1
DATA
/MAG TAPE BOOT ROUTINE;
/MUST BE PRESENT IN TAPE
/BLOCK 273; WILL BE OVER-
/WRITTEN ON USE.
/WHEN CALLED THIS CODE READS
/TAPE BLOCKS 270-273 TO
/MEMORY BLOCKS 0-3.
/TO USE:
/ 1) LEFT SW TO 1760
/ 2) START LEFT SW
/RESTART ADDRESS
Sherman, 12 owner
shermanfoy at att.net
<endquote>
> On Jul 13, 2015, at 8:52 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se> wrote:
> ??? What segments??? The PDP-11 have a plain simple page table. No
> segments anywhere in sight. And each page is 8K.
I know the processor handbook calls them 'pages', but I can't think of any
other machine where pages are variable size. (I know of a couple which offer
_two_ page sizes, but none that have a field per page which specifies the
length of the page.)
They really are more like what most machines call 'segments'. I know Unix
doesn't use them that way (because it has such a simple-minded memory model),
but other systems do - e.g. MERT.
Noel
Clearing out more of the collection that never gets used- everything
works perfectly and is cosmetically in good condition. Prices are make
an offer, i just want to see this stuff go to a good home
Apple IIGS ROM 03
4MB RAM Card
CFFA 3000 Card
2x 3.5inch FDDs
1x 5.25inch FDD
AE Conserver- Allows you to sit 2 Floppy drives under the monitor and
functions as a power strip
Commodore 64
C64NIC+
ZoomFloppy
SD2IEC Interface with 8GB SD Card
JiffyDOS
Cart Slot Expander from Jim Brain
1701 Monitor
2x 1541 FDDs
Mac Performa 631CD
64MB RAM
500MB HDD
Ethernet Card
Matching 15inch Monitor
NeXT Mono Slab
20MB RAM
2GB HDD
Frog Monitor
Non ADB Keyboard & Mouse
HP 9000/712
96MB RAM 1GB HDD
NeXTSTEP 3.3 Installed
Sun SparcStation 5
64MB RAM
36GB HDD
OpenStep 4.2 Installed
3 Intel OpenStep 4.2 Boxes
Dell Dimension XPS T450
128MB RAM
10GB HDD
Rage 3D Video
SoundBlaster Awe32
USB Card- Supported in OpenStep 4.2
Dell Dimension 233mhz
32MB RAM
4GB HDD
Networking
OpenStep 4.2 Installed
Needs SB 16 Card for Audio
HP Pavilion 6630
Celeron 500mhz
64MB RAM
3C905 Network Card
Running OpenStep 4.2
Needs SB 16 Card for Audio
DOS/Win Gaming Rigs
Dell Dimension L1000R
Windows 98SE
256MB RAM
20GB HDD
Rage 128 Video
Dell Dimension L667R
128MB RAM
15GB HDD
Rage 128 Video.
IBM AT Clone
40MB HDD
640K RAM
5.25 and 3.5 Drives
Parts & Stuff
10 36GB SCA SCSI Hard Drives
Sun Caddy Load external SCSI CD-ROM
Sony External SCSI CD-ROM
4x Zip Drives, 2 Parallel 2 SCSI with 20 zip disks
Syquest EZ135 Drive with 15 Carts
Medium Flat rate boxes filled with DSDD 3.5inch Disks 5.25inch Disks and
3.5in HD Disks
6 Large totes filled with SCSI Cables, AC Adapters, Ethernet Cables,
You name it
There is honestly too much to list.. Thats just a sampling of whats here
in parts and accessories.
Thanks
Steve