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101090 discussions

by rickb＠bensene.com

> I'm curious what the Systems 32/77 is.. >Wasn't Gould SEL? maybe an SEL system? The 32/77-series was a 32-bit machine implemented in ECL, based on earlier SEL designs, but is definitely Gould in design/manufacture. Some of the machines in the series had a very powerful (for the time) floating point unit (known as the IPU) that operated in tandem with the main CPU that vastly increased the number-crunching power available The machines were mainly intended for real-time control applications (as used in the flight sim applications in the auction) The machine ran a real-time executive called MPX-32. More information: http://www.encore-support.com/htmls/32_77.htm Years ago, I had some experience with these machines. They were quite powerful for their time, and were also workhorses that just ran and ran. Very robust design. These are neat machines, and I hope that they end up in the hands of someone that can care for them rather than ending up scrap. -- Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

9 years, 3 months

VAX/VMS Pascal, Modula-3, Oberon, what could have been....

by seefriek＠gmail.com

I've heard Modula-3 (from DEC SRC and Olivetti Research Center) called "the Ada regular programmers would adopt". They never did, of course, because Olivetti decided research wasn't that important and DEC got bought and a lot of other reasons that are documented elsewhere. Not to get into a language pissing contest, but IMO it's an awfully nice way to program, with threading built in, type safety, generics, a reasonable GC, exceptions, etc. I really enjoyed it, but then I think Ada brings a lot to the table. What might have been, indeed.

9 years, 3 months

Looking for info on a CAMAC module - Kinetic 3912 Unibus Crate Controller

by pete＠petelancashire.com

Over the years I've played around with a few old CAMAC (*) modules, by today's standard they pretty much have zero value, anyway that's another story. Recently I've been offered a CAMAC to Unibus board. A Kinetic 3912 Unibus Crate Controller . A Crate in CAMAC speak is just a chassis with a backplane. The problem with CAMAC is there is almost no information out there, Since I don't YET have a Unibus system, it more of a curiosity then anything. So .. anyone have the manual ? (*) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Automated_Measurement_and_Control

9 years, 3 months

QIC-150 1/4" Cartridge Drive with Emulex MT-02 SCSI-QIC Controller?

by rickb＠bensene.com

Hello, all, Question of the day: Will an Emulex MT-02 SCSI->QIC tape controller work with a Wangtek 5150EQ (QIC-150) Tape Drive? I am trying to resurrect an old Tektronix 4132 Unix workstation. The 1/4" Wangtek 5099EQ drive that was in the machine was toast, something on the drive's electronics went POP when it powered on the first time, and it is no longer being recognized by the MT-02 controller. I have documentation on the drive, and will probably look into seeing if I can fix whatever fried, but in the short-term, I have a Wangtek 5150EQ with a good drive wheel, and was wondering if this drive would function with the MT-02 and be useful on the machine. I have a bunch of old (1980's) QIC-24 tapes written with the old 5099EQ drive that I want to look through and archive in a different form. And yes...I know about the tension band issues with old 1/4" QIC media...I've got a bunch of new tension bands and have become quite adept at replacing them and assuring the proper tension on the tape. Wishing all a peaceful day, -Rick -- Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

9 years, 3 months

VAX/VMS Pascal, Modula-3, Oberon, what could have been....

by mark＠wickensonline.co.uk

I recently discovered the very excellent website http://pascal.hansotten.com devoted to all things Wirth. I sent a message to the author, as detailed below, but I would encourage anyone to visit the website - you will surely learn something? Greetings from Windermere in the Lake District, England! I read with interest your interview with John Reagan. His efforts on the VAX Pascal Compiler, and more recently (well, in the last few years or so) my discovery of the very excellent Theo De Klerk book on VAX Pascal and it's excellent integration with the VMS operating system have rekindled my love of this excellent implementation of Pascal. I am the organiser of declegacy.org.uk - a 'mostly' annual event here in Windermere where collectors of DEC equipment and ex-employees gather to immerse themselves once again in the excellence of product that was the result of DEC Engineering. I have tried a couple of times to 'entice' John to provide a video narrative of his time at DEC - but, thankfully, he is still a very busy man. At DEC Legacy this time around for example I was very fortunate to find myself in the 'programming zone' for a couple of hours - sat at a VT terminal, trying to determine why my VAX Macro-32 fractal generation programme would not run successfully on a DEC Alpha via the VAX Macro Compiler. For those precious moments I could have been sat at a piece of DEC equipment anywhere in the world. For a programmer this is just intoxicating and all too rare these days. I have a long standing interest in the legacy of Wirth - and indeed DEC, as could be expected. When I was considering a programming language for my PhD efforts on a DEC 3000/600 AXP running Digital Unix 3.2C in 1994 I would have been better using Modula-3 and ignoring the C-based Khoros framework which was the path I eventual took (C was a 'better the devil you know' option at that point).

9 years, 3 months

Unknown DEC indicator panel

by blstuart＠bellsouth.net

On Tue, 11/1/16, Jon Elson <elson at pico-systems.com> wrote: >? Also, some IBM publications (where I'm more > familiar with their models) had some photos > of machines that probably were in-house > prototypes that were quite different than the > production version. Along the same lines, the picture in the original PDP-8 manual was of a machine that had a front panel that looked more like the PDP-5 panel than the one shipped on the 8s. Given how close the machines were in architecture, it wouldn't be surprising for a prototype. As it turns out, I saw the picture in the manual a few years before I ever saw a real straight-8. To this day, the real straight-8s look a little "wrong" to me. BLS

9 years, 3 months

[TUHS] Booting PDP-11's from RX02's

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Don North > Track 0 is not used by standard DEC software I wonder why DEC did't use track 0. The thing is small enough (256KB in the original single-density) that even 1% is a good chunk to throw away. Does anyone know? (I had a look online, but couldn't turn anything up.) If I had to _guess_, one possibility would be that track 0 is the innermost track, where the media is moving the slowest, and as a result it's more error-prone. Another is that IBM used track 0 for something special, and DEC tried to conform with that. But those are pure guesses, I would love to know for sure. Noel

9 years, 3 months

FTGH: "Screw Terminal/Signal Conditioning" panel

by useddec＠gmail.com

Have a few minutes? Paul

9 years, 3 months

Unknown DEC indicator panel

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So, the CHM has an RSTS-11 brochure: http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/DEC/pdp-11/Digital.PDP-11… which shows in a couple of places (front cover, page 6, 7, 10, 11) an indicator panel which I haven't been able to identify: it's the one where there are four full-length light rows on the left, and the lower right row of lights is broken up in the three groups - small, large, small. (The other indicator panel is known, it's an an RF11). I have been searching for these panels for quite a while now, and have a page for them: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/DECIndicatorPanels.html _but_ ... I have never seen that panel. I am quite sure that it is _NOT_ an RK11-C panel; although no image of such has ever been found (I think because it was never produced - no DEC manual or print set refers to it), the RK11-C prints show the wiring for the connector to the indicator panel (which would presumably have been a standard DEC 19" x 5-1/4" panel of the kind documented on the page above), and from that it's possible to predict what it would look like, as shown here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/RK11-C_inlay.txt http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/RK11-C_inlay.pdf Can anyone shed any light (no pun intended :-) on what this is? The RF11 engineering drawings list (on page 187/188) all the inserts available (as of that date) for the standard 19" x 5-1/4" indicator panel, and I don't have pictures of all of them, so it's possible this is one of them. (It's clear from the brochure that this wasn't necessarily a working system, since it appears in a number of different configurations. So maybe they just grabbed up a random indicator panel and plugged it in to make the system look cool.) One possibility is that it's a prototype that was never produced - or perhaps it was the indicator panel for an earlier RK11 controller (although I can't find any mention of an RK11-B or RK11-A, and the list above doesn't contain an RK11 entry). Anyone have any ideas? Noel

9 years, 3 months

FTGH: "Screw Terminal/Signal Conditioning" panel

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So I have a "Screw Terminal/Signal Conditioning" panel made by Data Translation; includes some cables and mongo connectors: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/jpg/CablePanel.jpg FTGH. Again, no idea what it does, I have't bothered to look for info, since I'm sure I have no use for it! Please, take this and the video controller: http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2016-November/029102.html off my hands! Noel

9 years, 3 months

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