A few hours ago, I rescued from the trash a Data General
commemorative 5-year anniversary serving tray. It is a shallow
wooden box, 1' X 1.25' X 1", with handles on the narrow sides.
The inside bottom of the box, on which you would put the teapot
and so on, it says,"Data General Five Years of Service 1983".
Surrounding that text is a timeline of 1977-1978, with photos.
It starts with, "Corporate Quality Logo Chosen", and ends with
"Data General Weathers the Blizzard -Data General employees in the
northeast, particularly those in Massachusetts, have weathered what
is now being called 'The Blizzard of '78'.
Many Employees were stranded at DG plants that were surrounded by
more than 20 inches of snow. In true DG fashion, everyone joined
together to make the best of it. DG sheltered many motorists who
found themselves stranded." -My abbreviations.
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I got a Data General One laptop that someone was using as a wheel-
chock at a flea market. It has a smashed LCD, and won't start.
Now,
a)Does anyone have an extra LCD that would work?
b)What type of power does it use?
c)Does anyone want any parts? It's in good physical condition.
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<Quite a few. from memory....the S-100, probably the earliest micro bus
<to become popular. A standard business configuration for 8-bit would be
It was preceeded by at least three others. L-bus from Control Systems
of natick MA for 8008. Intel had the MCS bus and later multibus.
<16-bit systems it would be an 80286, 1MB RAM, hard drive in the 40MB
<range, 4 to 16 serial ports to CRT terminals and printers, maybe even a
<modem, running MP/M or Concurrent DOS, again with applications written
More likely 8088 or 8086 with 1meg. The 286 s100 crates could carry at
least 16meg and 4meg would not be out of line.
<in BASIC. A lot of single board Z80, 8086, and 80286 systems (like
<Altos) built this same basic configuration, but without an expansion
<bus.
AmproLB and xerox820 were pretty well known.
<The SS-50, a competitor for the S-100 but using Motorola 6800 CPU, never
<really caught on. VME, an industrial bus still alive today, lots of
IT did but it was exclusively 6800/6809.
<S-100 except it used 86 pin bus, called Exor, something like that, never
<caught on either, though Motorola did their best to promote it for a
It was processor specific, if you weren't using MOTO cpu it was
inappropriate.
<There were some holdovers from the mini makers. Q-bus, DEC's bus for
<the PDP-11 micros and later the MicroVAX. A typical PDP would be a
<PDP-11/03 CPU, 64K RAM, 2.5MB hard drive (RK05), 4 port serial to a
<VT-100 terminal, and a DECwriter II for a printer. Business apps were
Only the very earliest LSI-11 system ised the RK05 series as they were
replaced very quickly by the RL01 and later RL02. An 11V03 was 32kb ram,
two DL serial lines and RX01 floppy in the 30" short cab. The 11T03 added
a pair of RK05 disks.
By the early to mid 80s the 11/23 cpu had replaced the slow 11/03 cpu and
memory was typically 128-256k.
<written in FORTRAN, DIBOL, or BASIC, usually running on the RT-11
RSTS and RSX-11 timesharing and multitasking OSs were available as well
as Ultrix-11(dec unix) by the mid 80s.
<operating system. BTW the Q-bus wasn't strictly DEC proprietary, DEC
<sold PDP-11 CPU chips for a while, Plessey made their own PDP-11 systems
DEC owned the license there were at least three that were licensed for
it, Heath/schulmber/zenith, plessy and one of the military aircraft guys.
DEC also sold raw chips, the T-11 and J-11 being notable.
Most of the volume production of chips was by AMD and Harris to DEC spec.
Also CTbus (pro350/380), UNIBUS 11/24, 11/74, 11/84 are two more examples
of DEC PDP-11 buses used for micros.
<Intersil made the IM6100, a microprocessor version of the 12-bit PDP-8,
<but I don't recall if a bus was ever associated with it. Data General
Omnibus was the real PDP-8(E,F,M,A series) and intersil had a bus that
was also used by harris. The 6120 was supplanted by the faster 6120
that had the EMA integrated into it. The DECMATE-II/III used the 6120.
Harris was the second source. However they out produced intersil on the
raw parts.
DECs first 32bit micro that was complete on one chip was the 78032 (aka
microvax-II). It is still a popular cpu for those that like a good
performing system that runs as DEC would advertize 24x7x365. The ones I
have did and still do exactly that save for power failures.
<had a bus for the NOVA minis and I believe Fairchild made a micro
<version based on the 9440 microprocessor (NOVA instruction set). Texas
Microflame. It was supposed to be a faster version of the micronova. I
have specs in my collection.
TI had no less than many different busses depending on model and the group
that originated the system.
Allison
There's an interesting one. I only have two floppy drives. Where
would the hard drive go? There's an extra ribbon plug on the MB,
same as for the display and keyboard, what's that for?
>
>I'd like the hard drive if it still works.
>
>James L. Rice
>
>Max Eskin wrote:
>>
>> I got a Data General One laptop that someone was using as a wheel-
>> chock at a flea market. It has a smashed LCD, and won't start.
>> Now,
>> a)Does anyone have an extra LCD that would work?
>> b)What type of power does it use?
>> c)Does anyone want any parts? It's in good physical condition.
>>
>> ______________________________________________________
>> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>
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I don't have much room, but thankfully, manuals are pretty rare.
But I think I wouldn't be able to tolerate having hundreds of manuals
for incredible machinery and never even seeing the machine.
>I grab any/all manuals (and data books, general computing books) that
are
>being thrown out, of course. I also buy just about any I see in
>second-hand bookshops.
>
>But I also buy a lot new. The IBM Techrefs, for example. I've probably
>spent more on manuals than on hardware over the years. Having complete
>and accurate documentation is very important.
>
The boston public library probably has more books on writing
computer manuals than any other single thing about computers.
>
>Hmm.. I'd rather have a schematic and a ROM listing with a brief
>description, however badly written to a lot of English prose that tells
>me nothing. Alas a lot of manuals and books are in the latter category.
>
>
>> Possibly the rare good ones become Sci-Fi writers :^)
So that's why the stories never make sense and have tiny chapters :)
>> ciao larry
>> lwalker(a)interlog.com
>>
>
>-tony
>
>
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Thanks to everyone that responded about archiving documents. I printed
out all the replies and I'm in the process of experimenting.
IT'S ALIVE
About two months ago I picked up a package deal that included an H-8
computer, H-17 dual (hard sector) floppy drive unit, a couple of boxes
of 5 1/4 diskettes (HDOS), a 4K Altair Basic paper tape and manual, and
a H-10 paper tape reader/punch with all the manuals. I had the boxes sent
to work so as soon as I unpacked everything I connected the H-8 up. I used
my Pentium as the terminal and the H-8 fired right up into HDOS.
Anyway...
The H-10 had been nonfunctioning for years because the owner had
arc tested the electronics board with a screwdriver. Last week I took
a break from scanning manuals to take the H-10 apart on the kitchen
table. It turned out to be 2 1N4002 diodes in the 5 volt supply that had
both shorted. It works. Now I just have to order some new paper tape.
It came with 3 rolls but the tape is so old that it breaks when an entire
row of holes are punched and the sprocket keeps ripping the sprocket
holes even with no tension on the tape.
I'll try to get some pictures of the insides to put up. It's beautiful. Nine
large solenoids connect to the punch head by rods about 6-7 inches long.
The read head uses a lamp that looks like an automobile tail lamp.
The cool part is that the H-10 can copy tapes stand-alone (without being
connected to the computer).
Well, I'm excited.
By the way.
Question:
If I made the claim on my ELF page that the 32 byte prom based monitor
on the SUPER ELF was the "smallest manufacturer installed firmware
operating system for a digital microcomputer" would anyone here
disagree? (I'm trying to add more infomation to this page of my museum)
Later
=========================================
Doug Coward dcoward(a)pressstart.com
Senior Software Engineer
Press Start Inc.
Sunnyvale,CA
Curator
Museum of Personal Computing Machinery
http://www.best.com/~dcoward/museum
=========================================
Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Punched cards have one major design bug IMHO that's not shared by paper
>tape. There's no 'column reference' on a card.
>It's therefore almost impossible to make a hand-pulled card reader.
Come to think of it, perhaps a sub-$50 B/W QuickCam would make a
cheaper reader than a scanner. You could aim it at the card, in a
frame, and drive it by hand. Front-lighting and scanning can put
a non-card color behind the holes. Or you could back-light with
infrared LEDs and take advantage of chip-cam IR sensing. Unlike
phototransistor or mechanical solutions, it's not dependent on
particular card geometry.
I know the video/scanning route sounds like technological overkill.
What's wrong with that? :-) It reminds me of my day-dream to
rescue audio cassette data using PC sound card digitizing.
I like these novel solutions because they are less dependent on
esoteric hardware, and the core - the software - is more portable
and transportable into the future and to users who need it.
Sounds like Ethan has more spare time than I do, though!
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
>>
>> Could someone tell me what the configuration of individual gates
>> is (one of them, at least) for binary addition (or provide an EASY
>> TO FIND reference)?
> I'll give you the equations, you can draw the gates yourself (it's
> getting late...)
> lots of stuff about adders
There is a much easier one chip solution, the brute force approach.
Take a TTL PROM, size dependent on how big an adder you need, use the
address lines as terms A and B, and use the outputs as the result. For
instance, for a 4 bit adder, use a 256x8 TTL PROM, lower 4 address bits
are A, upper 4 are B, and the 8 output lines are the result (only 5
used, 4 plus carry). Program the PROM with all the possible results.
You can also make a poor man's multiplier or divider the same way. For
a multiplier all 8 output lines would be used.
Jack Peacock
I'm curious about the various home/small business computer standards.
I know about the PC standard *sigh*. There was also the MSX standard
which involved a Z80 and 64K ram, I think. What other ones were there?
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<True. If you write the program to keep careful time (and reject cards wi
<fewer than 80 chars), it _might_work. There is, of course, a brute-forc
<approach - 960 phototransistors. Additionally, one could build a 4 dpi
<scanner (12 pixels and a stepper motor). With the steppper from a 5.25"
<drive and either a mechanical amplifier (lever) to pull the 7" stroke or
<either a) multiple 12-bit sensors or b) one 80-bit sensor w/3" stroke,
<it wouldn't be that hard to make, not that I have the time to make a
<contraption of that complexity.
Ah gads you guys do it the hard way. Take a stepper from something and
put a roller on it with a diameter such that one step will move the card
forward one column. Then all you need is one rows worth of
phototransistors. I forget the punched card orgainization but a parallel
port (printer) off a PC should be enough bits.
For hand pulled it's a row of phototransistors for reading the column and
one phototransistor for each row.
V--to read column
=============================================================guide rail
+
+
+
+
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ <<<<<<<direction of motion (96 needed)
^ +
| +
/ +
| +
|=============================================================guide rail
^optos to read the leading edge of the card for column clock, spacing
is such that each one is obscured as the column is over the column
leds making it self indexing. It's possible to go very fast.
Oh the only difference with hole vs mark sense is transmittance or
reflective sensing.
Allison
