<> More recently, Intel designed the 8089 I/O co-processor as part
<> of the 8086 family. It had an instruction set optimized for I/O
<> functions.
And not so recently starting with the AT and all after the keyboard
interface chip is a slave cpu (8041a or 8042).
In 81 I started a system using multiple z80s and 8085s to do things
like disk IO and loosely coupled multiprocessing (using z80s). When I
had it up and operational it could outrun a dos powered 386/20.
Slave procesors and distributed cpus are not new. One favorite is the
PDP-12, a PDP-8 with a linc-8 as a peripheral. The PDP-10 used PDP-8
as an IO processor or later ones used PDP-11s. Even the Microvax-II
disk controller had a T-11(chip version of a base PDP-11).
Allison
> Daniel,
>
> Does the system 34 use *" floppy disks? I don't know anything about S34
> but I think I got a bunch of disks this weekend and I think some them are
> original disks for the S 34.
>
> Joe
I don't know about Daniel's machine but every System/34 I've ever seen
does. It takes them either singly or in "magazines" of ten diskettes.
I recommend that anyone with a S/34 tries to get hold of some of the
empty magazines - or even full ones.
AFAIK, IBM's idea was you kept yor software, backups etc. in magazines,
unless it was 3 disks or fewer. I imagine most people did what people
nowadays will be forced to do - keep the disks in conventional boxes and
load the magazines immediately before insertion into the S/34.
Philip
;-) Clearing the snow from my glasses, I saw Russ Blakeman typed:
Nuts... Sorry, guys!
"Merch"
--
Roger Merchberger | If at first you don't succeed,
Owner, MerchWare | nuclear warhead disarmament should
zmerch(a)northernway.net | *not* be your first career choice.
I found an interesting gadget at a hamfest last weekend. It's a Digi-Viewer
made by SwTPc. It's a gold colored metal box about 6 x 5 x 4 inches. It
has the outline of an IC on it and 16 lights around the outline to
represent each IC pin. There's a cable coming out of the box with a 16 pin
chip clip on the other end. It's AC powered and looks like it uses
incandescent bulbs instead of LEDs. I've never heard of one before but it
looks like a prehistoric IC pin status display. Anyone here ever use one of
these?
BTW A friend of mine has a digital clock made my MITS. How rare are they?
Joe
Sure thing. I have one of those beasties. Before I could afford a
good oscilloscope it seemed like a nice way to bench-test some digital
(DTL & TTL) circuits. Modified mine with connector for the cable
attachment to the box so I could plug in different IC clips for different
sized components. Also could use it as a pretty dumb "logic analyzer"
with a cable that had clips or probes on each pin.
It never worked very well for dynamic circuits (not surprising) but I
did get a lot of use from it while breadboarding.
Gary
At 03:18 PM 3/10/98 -0500, you wrote:
>> I found an interesting gadget at a hamfest last weekend. It's a Digi-Viewer
>> made by SwTPc. It's a gold colored metal box about 6 x 5 x 4 inches. It
>> has the outline of an IC on it and 16 lights around the outline to
>> represent each IC pin. There's a cable coming out of the box with a 16 pin
>> chip clip on the other end. It's AC powered and looks like it uses
>> incandescent bulbs instead of LEDs. I've never heard of one before but it
>> looks like a prehistoric IC pin status display. Anyone here ever use one of
>> these?
>
>Yes, I have seen them, but that's about it. SWTPC made quite a few things
>that were not related to thier 680x based micros - in fact some things
>were not digital at all!
>
>William Donzelli
>william(a)ans.net
>
Pardon my ignorance but what is RCS/RI? Retro Computing Society of
Rhode Island? Regardless, is there a web address I can visit?
Marty
______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: Re[2]: Demography
Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet
Date: 3/5/98 2:30 PM
> I'd be interested in the Sphere, SWTPC gear, etc you don't want.
RCS/RI will be getting the bulk of it. That way, quite a few of us can
enjoy it at once.
The extras (I have three Spheres, for example) are being held for someone
in hopes that a trade comes up. If it does not, the extras will be
offered on the list.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
------ Message Header Follows ------
Received: from lists2.u.washington.edu by smtp.itgonline.com
(PostalUnion/SMTP(tm) v2.1.9i(b5) for Windows NT(tm))
id AA-1998Mar05.143059.1767.30390; Thu, 05 Mar 1998 14:31:00 -0500
Received: from host (lists.u.washington.edu [140.142.56.13])
by lists2.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW97.05) with SMTP
id LAA15048; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 11:21:55 -0800
Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7])
by lists.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW97.05) with ESMTP
id LAA14458 for <classiccmp(a)lists.u.washington.edu>; Thu, 5 Mar 1998
11:21:42 -0800
Received: from il1.nyp.ans.net (il1.nyp.ans.net [147.225.190.5])
by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW97.09) with SMTP
id LAA14269 for <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 11:21:29
-0800
Received: by il1.nyp.ans.net id AA02315
(InterLock SMTP Gateway 3.0 for classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu);
Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:21:32 -0500
Received: by il1.nyp.ans.net (Internal Mail Agent-1);
Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:21:32 -0500
Message-Id: <Pine.GSO.3.96.980305141907.468N-100000(a)titan.purch.ans.net>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:21:32 -0500 (EST)
Reply-To: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
Sender: CLASSICCMP-owner(a)u.washington.edu
Precedence: bulk
From: William Donzelli <william(a)ans.net>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Re[2]: Demography
In-Reply-To: <1998Mar05.125835.1767.86119(a)smtp.itgonline.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
X-To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 beta -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN
Anyone famillar with a Samsung S300? The e-mail address is
julief(a)nytimes.com.
>Dear Mr. Coward,
>Just visited your museum web site. Very nice. Unfortunately, it didn't
>contain the information I was seeking, namely, the retail price of a
>Samsung S300 back in 1988. I'm with the New York Times and I need the
>information for a story I'm working on. If you have an idea where I can
>look, please message me. Otherwise, good luck with your museum.
>Cheers,
>Julie Flaherty
=========================================
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
=========================================
I thought this might be of interest to the Brits on the list. I have
asked him for a couple of them so leave some for me :-)
Regards
Pete
On Tue, 10 Mar 1998 12:48:15 -0000, in comp.sys.dec "Jeff Chambers"
<jeff(a)admswood.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>I have 11 VT320's surplus to my requirements, which are free to a good
>home - ie not for resale by a broker.
>
>My only requirements are that this is a UK offer (I am Leicestershire based)
>and the prospective owner(s) collects or arranges carriage. The least hassle
>you offer me the better chance you can have one/them!
>
>Jeff
>
>
>> and I am interested in something that had a processor that
>> interacted w/the user and a separate one to do the
processing
>> (ie a real-time system capable of doing all that a normal
one can)
The earliest machine I know of that did this on a large scale
was the 6000 series from CDC, starting with the CDC 6600 in late
60's, designed by Seymour Cray. The main CPU was a superscalar
60 bit processor with no I/O instructions or ports, just memory.
All I/O was handled by PPUs (peripheral processor units), which
if I recall were 24 bit CPUs, (very hazy recall here) using an
older CDC 924 type instruction set. The PPUs had direct memory
channels into the main CPU. The operating system posted
messages to the PPUs for I/O requests. The PPUs were not user
programmable, but could be programmed at the system programmer
level.
More recently, Intel designed the 8089 I/O co-processor as part
of the 8086 family. It had an instruction set optimized for I/O
functions. I vaguely recall someone made an S-100 board with an
8089 on it (was it Godbout?) but it never caught on.
Jack Peacock
At 08:22 AM 3/10/98, you wrote:
> Was it your mailbox that filled up and was bouncing messages all over the
>place?
I sure hope not! If it was, I truly apologize! But I download mail
everyday, (although on weekends I don't always get to read it right away.)
I did get the NEC stuff. Thanks!
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/
At 04:00 PM 3/9/98 PST, you wrote:
> and I am interested in something that had a processor that
> interacted w/the user and a separate one to do the processing
> (ie a real-time system capable of doing all that a normal one can)
Godbout (CompuPro) made a processor board that had both an 80286 and an
8085. I know, because I worked on such a system in the early 80's.
Meanwhile, in that same box, the disk controller had a Z80 on it.
(I am *so* sorry I didn't go back and snag that system after we (the
employees) left en masse due to not having been paid for several months.)
In the early '80s, I felt rather strongly that the ideal system would be
based on a z8000 (or 80x86 if you must) for number crunching and general
processing and a 68000 for graphics and interface stuff. Put in two
processors and let 'em do what they're best at. Still feel the same, only
these days its the '586/'060 combo (or whatever the latest is).
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/
I found an Amstrad PCW-8256 word proccessor this morning. It uses CF-2
floppy disks. Are these the same small disks that everyone was looking for
a few weeks ago?
Joe
I went and started the System/34 yesterday... Gave it a good looking-over
first. The PSU is really interesting - There's a transfomer bigger than my
head, wires about a quarter-inch thick, and stickers all over that say
"DANGER! 580 VOLTS!" and "LINE POWER HERE WITH MACHINE POWERED OFF"
But I found one little note inside which makes me think that it's single-phase
reading "INPUT POWER 208V/1PH".
Anyway, the previous owner gave me a userid and password, so I started
it up - It's all menuized. Cute. The MACHINE IN USE light is burned out too.
Oh - On the CE panel thee's a LAMP TEST button. It turns on ALL the lamps,
not the the CE-panel lamps. Also, on power-on, you have to push LOAD to
read in the bootstrap. Then supply it with a username and password.
I was tld MJR was the system manager - Is that standard on all IBM stuff?
-------
On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 00:50:19 +0000 (GMT) Tony Duell said:
Tim said about bit-rot
>> In the first stages of bit rot, single bits go "flaky" and will not
>> read reliably. So the first thing to do is read the 1702A's multiple
>> times and see if any are going bad in this way. Of course, be sure
>> to save the results of each read pass...
Tony replied with:
>With _most_ EPROMs, bit-rot causes 0's to turn into 1's, but not the
>reverse, since the fully erased (=discharged) state of the chip is full
>of FF's. Thus if you start to detect flakyness, you read the chip n times
>and logically AND the dumps. This is not hard to do given another
>computer, of course.
Tony, this didn't sound right to me so I looked it up and my book is
saying that 1702A (and the 5204) erase to all 0s. Is this wrong?
And I thought I'd pass along this neat table that I found on DataI/O
web page while looking for device code for my Series 22.
I reduced it on the xerox machine and taped it to my programmer.
DEVICE DECIMAL DECIMAL HEX HEX HEX
SIZE NO. BITS ADDR RANGE NO. BYTES CHECKSUM(1)
===========================================================================
2708 1K X 8 8K 0 ---- 3FF 400 3FC00
2716 2K X 8 16K 0 ---- 7FF 800 7F800
2732 4K X 8 32K 0 ---- FFF 1000 FF000
2764 8K X 8 64K 0 --- 1FFF 2000 1FE000
27128 16K X 8 128K 0 --- 3FFF 4000 3FC000
27256 32K X 8 256K 0 --- 7FFF 8000 7F8000
27512 64K X 8 512K 0 --- FFFF 10000 FF0000
27010 128K X 8 1M 0 -- 1FFFF 20000 1FE0000
27020 256K X 8 2M 0 -- 3FFFF 40000 3FC0000
27040 512K X 8 4M 0 -- 7FFFF 80000 7F80000
27080 1024K X 8 8M 0 -- FFFFF 100000 FF00000
2048K X 8 16M 0 - 1FFFFF 200000 1FE00000
4096K X 8 32M 0 - 3FFFFF 400000 3FC00000
8192K X 8 64M 0 - 7FFFFF 800000 7F800000
(1) Represents the checksum of a blank EPROM where memory locations contain
FF hex.
=========================================
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
=========================================
At 08:16 AM 3/10/98, Joe wrote:
> The technical reference manuals sound interesting. How big are they? I
>might get one just to add to my documentation library.
There are two of them each about 250 pgs.
> Is there a command to show the amount of memory in the HX-20? I'll try
>it with and without the expansion unit connected and see what they do. BTW
>is it normal for the HX-20 to turn on and show a menu for: 1) Monitor 2)
>BASIC ? That's what these do. Do you have any user documentation for the
>monitor and BASIC for the HX-20?
Don't really see one. HX-20's came with 16k and I think the expansion
doubled that to 32k. It looks like the command "STAT ALL" should
give you what your looking for.
Les
<Nobody has ever made a Turing machine (it's that nasty infinitely long
<tape that keeps getting in the way), but that reminds me of something I'v
<been looking for. Didn't Danny Hillis make a computer from TinkerToys
<(TM) as part of his PhD thesis or something? I've been looking for the
<schematics....
Yes I know but it has been done. Back when shift registers were commonly
available with lengths of 1024 bits it was very trivial to string a few
and get really long serial memory. With moden megabit rams it's not that
much more difficult. The tape was not so much the problem but the
programing...
Allison
Doug,
I'll let you know if he decides to sell. I think he's considering it.
These are NICE units. They were used as controllers in some kind of
survielence (sp?) systems so they were enclosed inside of another unit and
have never been handled and they look like new.
The technical reference manuals sound interesting. How big are they? I
might get one just to add to my documentation library.
Is there a command to show the amount of memory in the HX-20? I'll try
it with and without the expansion unit connected and see what they do. BTW
is it normal for the HX-20 to turn on and show a menu for: 1) Monitor 2)
BASIC ? That's what these do. Do you have any user documentation for the
monitor and BASIC for the HX-20?
Joe
At 11:57 PM 3/9/98 -0600, you wrote:
>On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, Joe wrote:
>
>> I don't have them for sale. They belong to a friend of mine. If he
>> decides to sell one, I'll let you know. Do they need a special tape or
>> will a standard audio tape work in them? What's the expansion unit?
>
>Thanks, Joe, I would like to buy one, so let me know if he sells. I don't
>know much about the HX-20, but I think the expansion unit was memory
>expansion (from 16K to 32K?). I've talked to somebody that used to sell
>these things as a dealer, and he still has the technical reference manual,
>so if we become HX-20 owners, I'll see if I can at least get photocopies
>of the tech ref.
>
>BTW, I saw an Epson HC-41 today. I think the HX-20 and HX-40 were sold in
>Japan as the HC-20 and HC-40 (which was also called the PX-4, I think).
>I've never heard of an HC-41 before today, but it looked sort of like an
>HX-20 except it had chicklet keys and a non-QWERTY layout. It was
>attached by ribbon cable to a rather large machine; the tiny Epson and
>large machine it controlled where being sold as a matched set for $250.
>
>-- Doug
>
>
<is is just the same machine without framebuffer and monitor? My only VAX
<(so far) is a VAXstation 3100 m38, and I'm finally starting to understan
<why there is such a religious user base for them.
;-)
<Also, Allison, which model is the guy giving away?
Free! ;-) Specific type unknown. I plan to round them up and then see
what we have.
Allison
<Didn't Danny Hillis make a computer from TinkerToys
<(TM) as part of his PhD thesis or something? I've been looking for the
<schematics....
I haven't seen schematics, but there was a write-up of a TinkerToy computer
which plays Tic Tac Toe in Scientific American a few years ago; sorry, I
don't remember the year. I do remember the description being good enough to
make me feel that I understood how the thing worked and, with a little
enthusiasm and a bunch of TinkerToys, possibly replicate. Perhaps now that
I have a big pile of K'NEX I should find the issue and give it a go.
IIRC, the Tic Tac Toe machine is essentially a ROM lookup table. You encode
the current state of the board on a part of the machine which slides up and
down then hoist that part to the top. As the part falls, it compares the
state of the board to the various entries in the ROM. Upon finding a match,
it waves a flag indicating its move.
Roger Ivie
ivie(a)cc.usu.edu
Hi,
Pardon someone fairly new to the cult of VAX, but what are the differences
between the VAXstation 3100 and the VAXserver 3100? Is it like Suns, where
is is just the same machine without framebuffer and monitor? My only VAX
(so far) is a VAXstation 3100 m38, and I'm finally starting to understand
why there is such a religious user base for them.
Also, Allison, which model is the guy giving away? Please let me know when
you get them and what condition they were in, I'm really interested. 6/7
of my freebies have turned out to be expensive-to-ship parts boxes, the
only real exception being a Sun 3/50 that was magnificent (complete with
memory expansion board).
Regards,
Aaron
At 12:07 AM 3/9/98 -0600, you wrote:
>On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, Joe wrote:
>
>> I just found two Epson HX-20 computers with expansion units, plug-in
>> printers and plug-in micro-cassette drives. I've seen lots of these
>> computers but not the other items. Can anyone tell me about them? What's
>> a setup like this worth? Everthing is in PERFECT condtion, but no books,
>> tapes or anything else included.
>
>I was thinking about getting one of these myself, and I checked and found
>both ribbons and tapes still available (I think it was on Epson's Canadian
>site). I don't think there's a bid enough market for these things to
>come up with a pricing guide. Most people still give this stuff away for
>free since it's worthless to them.
>
>I'll give you $40 for one to kill two birds with one stone: I'll get an
>HX-20, and we'll establish the going market price for them.
>
Doug,
I don't have them for sale. They belong to a friend of mine. If he
decides to sell one, I'll let you know. Do they need a special tape or
will a standard audio tape work in them? What's the expansion unit?
Joe
William Donzelli <william(a)ans.net> writes:
> In general, the unusual stuff dies early.
That's a very interesting statement, but if you think about it it's both
"exactly backwards" and "exactly true." Stuff becomes known as "unusual"
precisely BECAUSE it "dies early" -- and is therefore not around to become
"commonplace!" Dinosaurs are extinct today BECAUSE they died out 65 million
years ago...
Chris Chiesa
cchi(a)lle.rochester.edu
All right, I have another bombing of questions and theories for y'all.
1)What was the first network server product for the IBM PC architecture?
2)Let's take the GRiD server as an example (I have never seen a GRiD
machine, BTW). How does it differ from any desktop system?
3)Have there been any machines that made extensive use of a truly
unusual architecture? What I am looking for is twofold: I am
interested if anything ever used a neural network-like arrangement,
and I am interested in something that had a processor that
interacted w/the user and a separate one to do the processing
(ie a real-time system capable of doing all that a normal one can)
These are for my personal investigations, but I have a feeling that
many new ideas have been tried before to some extent.
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
At 07:49 AM 3/9/98, you wrote:
>>FWIW, I got email earlier today from somebody who threw his IPC away when
>>nobody took him up on his offer of taking it away for free....
>
> That's very strange since I frequently see ads from people wanting to
>buy them. There was an ad in one of the HP news-groups just a few days
ago.
[I missed the beginning of this; I apparently got booted off the list.*]
I too am looking for one, and would gladly take one for free. Depending on
my financial circumstances at the time, I would even pay for one.
*Not being one to know when I'm not wanted, I promptly signed up again. 8^)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/
<>Hello all,
<
<>We have several (currently 6, more to come) VaxServer 3100's that
<>we have retired from service. They had been doing Macintosh file =
<>serving,
<>for the last 5 years and have been replaced with NT boxes.
I wrote him in the hopes of securing them, vermont it not far to go.
Allison
