--- XOR website --- A couple weeks ago I solicited input on the "Data Science XOR computer." I did so here and on one of the usenet groups. I'm not sure which list produced the lead, but a gentleman named Jerry Wright stepped up and very kindly sent me scans of the manuals he had and made copies of boot floppies for me. I've cleaned up the machine (including removing extensive amounts of 20 year old cellophane tape residue), set the jumpers on the floppies to something rational (originally they were nonsense, including using a 16 pin shunt package in place of the 150 ohm termination resistor pack!), and disassembled the ROM looking for clues, but so far it doesn't boot from disk. There are things I can do to make more progress, but for now I'm setting it on the shelf so I can get back to things that were in progress when I let the XOR computer take over my life. I'll get back to it eventually. Meanwhile, I've put up a simple web site with some information about the machine, some pictures, and other resources: the disassembled monitor along with an intel HEX dump, teledisk disk images, and the manuals. The manuals aren't exactly what Jerry gave to me; I changed some page orientations, rearranged pages that were out of order, used G4 compression to cut the file sizes by more than half, and converted the 8bpp covers on one manual to 1 bpp. http://www.thebattles.net/xor/xor.html It might worth ten minutes of idle browsing to some of you, or perhaps someone has one on their shelf and could use the information. Likewise, if you have something to share, please send it to me and I'll add it to the web site. --- HAUL REPORT --- BTW, this was one of the machines I picked up from Stan Johnson, in Aurora, IL, last month. Stan had posted the availability of some machines on this list. The XOR wasn't in his email, but he unearthed it from his storage and made it part of the deal. Now, should I turn my attention next to the Horizon 8/16 multiprocessor system he also gave me? Or one of the Kaypro 10s? Perhaps the Osborne Executive? The Vector? The IMSAI turnkey? Or one of the H89's? Bwwaa, haaa, haaa. :-) Stan was a very nice guy indeed, and not just because he bestowed 8-bit riches upon me. I hope he found a good home for the Vax in his basement. --- Horizon 8/16 computer --- More seriously, next I'll probably dig into the Horizon 8/16. This system is a nearly stock Horizon box (aluminum, not wood, sides) with a beefier power supply. It has one 5.25" floppy disk and one hard disk, both integral. The base Horizon functionality seems to be intact. I'm working on making a boot floppy to bootstrap the hard disk (the system requires booting through the floppy; it doesn't boot the hard disk directly). Code there fires up the N slave Z80s, each with its own local 64 KB of DRAM. My system has two slave Z80s. These slaves each have a small paddle board that feeds RS-232 to a port in the back. The idea was to have one Z80 per user. Although the hard disk hasn't been booted yet, it undoubtedly has a copy of turbodos on it. Dave Dunfield and Barry Watzman have already been some help in getting started on it. I'll report back on it if I make any substantial progress.