Just a short post to introduce myself and what I'm up to...
I'm currently looking into one of Intergraph's old InterPro systems (a 2830)
and trying to dig up enough documentation to allow me to ultimately port
NetBSD to the box to replace the native CLIX (an old SYSV 3.2ish Unix).
Have made some pretty good progress on disassembling the boot EPROM and
writing the beginnings of a hardware simulator. After discovering the
CLIPPER CPU book online (not to mention the DP8510 BitBlt unit databook!), I
think my off-the-shelf chip documents are almost complete. Information on
the custom ASICs is almost nonexistent, but the system diagnostics provide
some good reference code which should provide useful information.
I'm curious to know if there's anyone else out there that's interested in
these relatively rare boxes? For anyone that cares, the basic hardware in
the box is:
C4M CLIPPER CPU at 70MHz, ECC RAM
Zilog 85C30 SCC and 85230 ESCC - one port used by keyboard, other three
available
Xilinix XC3020 fpga controls Versatec, Centronics or Intergraph
compatible plotter interface
Intel 82596 ethernet controller
NCR53c94 SCSI host controller
NEC82077 floppy controller
Dallas DS12887 RTC and NVRAM
128k boot UV EPROM
2x128k diagnostic/boot flash EPROM
The graphics board is built up with:
DP8510 BitBlt unit (x2 on dual head board)
custom Bresenham line-drawing ASIC
bt459 DAC (x2 on dual head board)
2x1M VRAM (double buffered), (x2 on dual head board)
The real key to the missing documentation is the remaining IOGA and SGA
custom asics on the system board. Anyone who has any other documentation on
this stuff would be a friend for life ;).
Regards,
Pat Mackinlay.