14 Jun
2002
14 Jun
'02
2:49 p.m.
One of my collecting goals is to acquire an example of
each of
the microprocessor acrhitectures. Now 6502, 8080, 6809, 68000,
and so on are easy. What about the Z8000? The 32032 (I do have
a Whitechapel)? The 88000? The iAPX432?
It's pretty tough to get iAPX 432 stuff. The software is even more
difficult to find than the boards or chips.
The iSBC-432/100 evaluation board was used in the MDS. There was an
interpreter for a language called OPL-432, which was a dialect of
Smalltalk closely related to Rosetta Smalltalk. Unfortunately OPL only
runs on the release 1.0 chips. (Maybe 1.1 as well?) The iSBC-432/100
never ran any of the "real" 432 software.
The full-blown development system was the 432/600 series, and typically
customers bought the standard configuration, a 432/670, although it was
possible to buy 432/6xx boards, backplanes, enclosures, etc. ala carte
in order to build smaller or larger configurations. The 432/670 could
support up to five processors and six memory cards for a total of 1.5M
of memory. I modified the memory controller and memory cards on one
system to allow for up to 6M using 256K DRAMs. By using a larger
backplane, it was possible to have six processors and ten memory cards
for a total of 2.5M (10M with my modifications).
All I/O went through one or more "Attached Processors" or APs. The
AP was typically 8086-based, and in practice was usually an iSBC 86/12A
or iSBC 86/14, running iRMX-86 or iRMX-88.
The 432/6xx had to be attached to a Series III MDS in order to
load and debug software, and the cross development had to be done on
a VAX running either VMS or BSD 4.1.
The software consists of:
MDS side:
diagnostics
DEBUG-432
VAX side:
CDS-432 Cross Development System:
Ada-432 compiler
LINK-432
iMAX-432 operating system
AFAIK, the last customer release of CDS-432 was release 2.7, which
supported the release 3.2 chips. Intel continued development in house
in support of the Intel/Siemens joint venture (later commercially named
"BiiN"). There were release 3.3 chips, and probably software to support
them, but they were not available to customers.
I have not been able to obtain a complete copy of any release of
CDS-432 or iMAX-432, nor I have found the diagnostics or DEBUG-432.
I keep hoping that copies of this stuff will turn up eventually, but
things look pretty grim...