19 Apr
2004
19 Apr
'04
1:32 p.m.
Does anyone know what this is?
<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2589635895&category=5091
6&sspagename=rvi:1:1>. The seller claims that it's a rare early CPU but I
don't think so.
Joe
19 Apr
19 Apr
2:14 p.m.
On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Joe R. wrote:
Does anyone know what this is?
<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2589635895&category=5091
6&sspagename=rvi:1:1>. The seller claims that it's a rare early CPU but I
don't think so.
I didn't realize 1983 was considered the "early days of electronics".
Wow, I wasn't born too late after all! Woohoo!
Looks like some cheezy mock-up if you ask me. Probably rare, I'll grant
him that (maybe), but is it significant?
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
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2:53 p.m.
In the 70's, TRW made a fast (for the day)
fully-combinational bipolar multiplier that was
packaged in an oversized DIP with a giant TRW logo.
Chamberlain's "Musical Applications of
Microprocessors"
has a picture of one. I have no idea what this
particular chip is, but TRW did make chips with this
"mock up" look.
--Bill
--- Vintage Computer Festival <vcf(a)siconic.com> wrote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Joe R. wrote:
<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2589635895&category=5091
Does anyone know what this is?
6&sspagename=rvi:1:1>. The seller claims that
it's a rare early CPU but
I
don't think so.
I didn't realize 1983 was considered the "early days
of electronics".
Wow, I wasn't born too late after all! Woohoo!
Looks like some cheezy mock-up if you ask me.
Probably rare, I'll grant
him that (maybe), but is it significant?
--
Sellam Ismail
Vintage Computer Festival
International Man of Intrigue and Danger
http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business ||
Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at
http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
3:36 p.m.
At 04:53 PM 4/19/04 -0700, you wrote:
In the 70's, TRW made a fast (for the day)
fully-combinational bipolar multiplier that was
packaged in an oversized DIP with a giant TRW logo.
Chamberlain's "Musical Applications of
Microprocessors"
has a picture of one.
I've seen those. I don't remember the PN but I found a pile of boards
full of them about a year ago. I find a lot of weird stuff like those.
Joe
I have no idea what this
particular chip is, but TRW did make chips with this
"mock up" look.
--Bill
--- Vintage Computer Festival <vcf(a)siconic.com> wrote:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Joe R. wrote:
<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2589635895&category=5091
Does anyone know what this is?
6&sspagename=rvi:1:1>. The seller claims that
it's a rare early CPU but
I
don't think so.
I didn't realize 1983 was considered the "early days
of electronics".
Wow, I wasn't born too late after all! Woohoo!
Looks like some cheezy mock-up if you ask me.
Probably rare, I'll grant
him that (maybe), but is it significant?
--
Sellam Ismail
Vintage Computer Festival
International
Man of Intrigue and Danger
http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business ||
Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at
http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
3:50 p.m.
On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, William Maddox wrote:
In the 70's, TRW made a fast (for the day)
fully-combinational bipolar multiplier that was
packaged in an oversized DIP with a giant TRW logo.
Chamberlain's "Musical Applications of
Microprocessors"
has a picture of one.
I have the Hayden hardback edition, 9th printing (1988) and it has
nothing like this in it - in fact no pictures at all, only line drawings.
The three microprocessors mentioned are the 8080, LSI-11, and 6502 - and
these are called out as:
The 8080 for synthesiser control
The LSI-11 for direct synthesis
The 6502 for 'logic replacement'
No mention of anything from TRW at all, for that matter....
Cheers
John
20 Apr
20 Apr
3:05 a.m.
Oops! I misremembered this.
It's in Curtis Roads and John Strawn (eds.) _Foundations of Computer Music_,
MIT Press, 1987.
--Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Lawson" <jpl15(a)panix.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 5:50 PM
Subject: Re: TDC1007 / 1007 / TRW / Rare TRW Processor ?
On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, William Maddox wrote:
In the 70's, TRW made a fast (for the day)
fully-combinational bipolar multiplier that was
packaged in an oversized DIP with a giant TRW logo.
Chamberlain's "Musical Applications of
Microprocessors"
has a picture of one.
I have the Hayden hardback edition, 9th printing (1988) and it has
nothing like this in it - in fact no pictures at all, only line drawings.
The three microprocessors mentioned are the 8080, LSI-11, and 6502 - and
these are called out as:
The 8080 for synthesiser control
The LSI-11 for direct synthesis
The 6502 for 'logic replacement'
No mention of anything from TRW at all, for that matter....
Cheers
John
5 p.m.
On Tue, 20 Apr 2004, William Maddox wrote:
Oops! I misremembered this.
It's in Curtis Roads and John Strawn (eds.) _Foundations of Computer Music_,
MIT Press, 1987.
Ah, yes - page 232 - fig 13.5 there is the big TRW multiplier chip.
Note that the DMX1000 digital synth is driven (housekept?) by a DEC LSI-11
with an RX02 clone (looks like a DSD unit) for storage... and the
requisite VT100.
Damn: wouldn't it be Cool if any of those were left forgotten in some
closet somewhere?
Remembering that this is circa 1978/9 - some specs listed:
"AT a 19.3 kHtz sampling rate it will implement, for example, 24 simple
oscillators, or 16 oscillators with ramp envelope control, or 8 voices of
frequency modulation, or 20 first-order filter sections, or 10
second-order filter sections, or 30 white noise generators, or various
combinations of the above, such as 12 oscillators and 4 voices of
frequency modulation"
[from the 4th printing of 1988 - the first edition came out in '85.]
Cheers
John
21 Apr
21 Apr
4:34 a.m.
>>>> "John" == John Lawson
<jpl15(a)panix.com> writes:
John> Remembering that this is circa 1978/9 - some specs listed:
John> "AT a 19.3 kHtz sampling rate it will implement, for example,
John> 24 simple oscillators, or 16 oscillators with ramp envelope
John> control, or 8 voices of frequency modulation, or 20 first-order
John> filter sections, or 10 second-order filter sections, or 30
John> white noise generators, or various combinations of the above,
John> such as 12 oscillators and 4 voices of frequency modulation"
Interesting.
Something like that was built at the University of Illinois PLATO
project, but much lower cost -- 16 small boards (one per channel) and
some spare cycles on the 8080 in the terminal to control it. That one
was actually mostly analog, each channel having its own D/A and analog
volume control. We actually looked at the TRW multiplier approach for
a third generation with 128 channels but decided it was too expensive
other than as a lab curiosity, which wasn't the goal.
This was the "Gooch Cybernetic Synthesizer" by Sherwin Gooch, around
1976.
paul
19 Apr
19 Apr
3:33 p.m.
At 04:14 PM 4/19/04 -0700, you wrote:
I doubt it. But it's not a mock-up. I have one that's new in a sealed
box. I think it might be a flash A/D. At least that's what I found in this
doc;
<http://www.optics.arizona.edu/jcwyant/pdf/Published_Papers/Optical_Testing/
3.8%20Micron.pdf>. I find alot of big old TRW ICs like this and I'm always
wondering what they are.
Joe
On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Joe R. wrote:
> Does anyone know what this is?
>
<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2589635895&category=5091
6&sspagename=rvi:1:1>. The seller claims that it's a rare early CPU but I
don't think so.
I didn't realize 1983 was considered the "early days of electronics".
Wow, I wasn't born too late after all! Woohoo!
Looks like some cheezy mock-up if you ask me. Probably rare, I'll grant
him that (maybe), but is it significant?
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer
Festival
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
International Man of Intrigue and Danger
http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers
]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at
http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
20 Apr
20 Apr
2:10 p.m.
On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 16:14:08 -0700 (PDT)
Vintage Computer Festival <vcf(a)siconic.com> wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Joe R. wrote:
I looked at a bunch of the other parts that seller has listed. It's the first time in
awhile that it's been actually PAINFUL to look at someone's pricing at an
'Ebay Store.' Atrociously priced DTL chips; 19.95 each, with 25 available. The
guy is either getting free listings from eBay, or is engaged in a big tax writeoff for the
loss he's about to take in listing fees.
Does anyone know what this is?
<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2589635895&category=5091
6&sspagename=rvi:1:1>. The seller claims that it's a rare early CPU but I
don't think so.
I didn't realize 1983 was considered the "early days of electronics".
Wow, I wasn't born too late after all! Woohoo!
Looks like some cheezy mock-up if you ask me. Probably rare, I'll grant
him that (maybe), but is it significant?
2:58 p.m.
Rumor has it that Scott Stevens may have mentioned these words:
I looked at a bunch of the other parts that seller has
listed. It's the
first time in awhile that it's been actually PAINFUL to look at someone's
pricing at an 'Ebay Store.' Atrociously priced DTL chips; 19.95 each,
with 25 available. The guy is either getting free listings from eBay, or
is engaged in a big tax writeoff for the loss he's about to take in
listing fees.
Not necessarily -- if he only gets a few takers on his Sony CXA1908S chips
(I did a quick search on the 1907S, and I think it's a video control chip
in monitors, but don't quote me ;-) for $65, and that would cover quite a
few ePay listing fees...
One thing: I went to their main site, just to see if they could yank a few
bullets outta their butt, and they have a multi-chip search function, so I
typed in this:
6309
63c09
1773
and I got hundreds of hits - and that was just on 6309. Once I saw the part
numbers, tho, I realized it was a very forgiving search function, so I
narrowed it down a bit.[1]
I put in:
63c09
wd1773
and they have *access*[2] to both the Hitachi 63C09 (faster Moto6809
compatible CPU with more registers & some 32bit functions) and the Western
Digital 1773 floppy disk controller chip used in the CoCo disk controllers.
Both of these chips are *very* rare, and there's one webpage I was subbed
to (until they sent me a bill for $130/quarter to continue using it) that
kept searchable chip inventory listings for other companies. I put in a few
requests for quotes with those companies, and they never got back to me.... :-/
Now, if this guy/company can get me some each of those chips...
reasonably... good service (hell, any service would help WRT these chips)
may merit a premium price, as long as it doesn't break the bank. And...
according to his inventory list, it looks like he's got some Hitachis in
stock[3]...
I'm entertaining idears of putting in an RFQ, just to see.... maybe it
could turn out well, maybe it would just be entertaining... ???
Anywho, laterz...
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
[1] For example, 1773 would bring up 17.73xxxxx Mhz crystals, nowhere near
what I'm interested in...
[2] No prices or "instock" inventories on the webpage, everythings
"RFQ" ->
Request for Quote
[3] No price... of course... looks like he only lists the prices for what's
got active ePay auctions for...
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch(a)30below.com
What do you do when Life gives you lemons,
and you don't *like* lemonade?????????????
4:12 a.m.
>>>> "Joe" == Joe R
<rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com> writes:
Joe> Does anyone know what this is?
Joe>
<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2589635895&category=50916&sspagename=rvi:1:1>.
Joe> The seller claims that it's a rare early CPU but I don't think
Joe> so.
Google calls it an 8 bit flash A/D. That certainly seems plausible.
If that's wrong, the other likely answer is a multiplier (though it
doesn't seem to have enough pins for that). Both were signal
processing components; TRW did some early ASICs there.
The picture doesn't look much like a real IC, more like a mockup for
marketing purposes...
If anyone wants one, there seem to be plenty available at various
surplus parts outlets; Google turned up a couple of those too.
paul
7398
days inactive
7400
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11 comments
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