28 Mar
2015
28 Mar
'15
10:16 p.m.
Hey all --
Last summer I picked up a Ridge 32/330 that became available locally.
This is a fairly obscure early RISC machine intended to be a competitor
to the VAX, it uses a 32-bit CPU at 12.5Mhz built from discrete
components (spanning three large PCBs). Mine's outfitted with 8mb of
ECC memory, Pertec, SMD and SCSI QIC controllers, and Ethernet.
You can see some pictures of this beast at:
https://plus.google.com/117997069161125071032/posts/JtsR3BokUxp?pid=6063976…
I got it running late last year after rebuilding the QIC tape drive and
dealing with some intermittent failures due to a couple of low-quality
DIP sockets. I now have a set of dedicated 20A circuits installed in my
basement so I can run it for longer periods of time without worrying
about burning my house down, so I'll be running it for the next couple
of weeks just for fun to keep the basement warm and run up my electrical
bill :).
It's currently running RX/V 1.1 (Ridge's UNIX variant) and it's on the
Internet (indirectly, since exposing a 25-year old UNIX directly to the
'net seems like a bad idea). I thought maybe some people here might be
interested in checking it out since it's pretty obscure, if you want an
account to play around, drop me a line and I can hook you up. I don't
know of any other Ridge machines out there (running or not) -- if you
have one let me know, there's very little information out there on these
things.
I'll add that I'm looking for an external SMD cabinet and cabling so
that I can image the original SMD disk that was in the Ridge when I got
it; it looks like it contains a valid partition table, but it will not
boot. I didn't want to wipe it so the Ridge is currently running off of
a spare drive -- I'd like to hook it up externally to dump an image from
the running RX/V system. If anyone has one to loan (preferably within
driving distance of Seattle) let me know.
Once that's done, it's time to figure out how to get the Eagle that came
with it running again...
And a huge thanks to Al Kossow for archiving the OS media that's on
Bitsavers, without which this machine would be a very large boat anchor
taking up many cubic feet in my basement. (If anyone has any media or
docs for this that aren't on Bitsavers, let me know -- I'm in particular
looking for an ROS distribution on QIC media...)
- Josh
28 Mar
28 Mar
10:21 p.m.
On Sat, 28 Mar 2015, Josh Dersch wrote:
It's currently running RX/V 1.1 (Ridge's UNIX
variant) and it's on the
Internet (indirectly, since exposing a 25-year old UNIX directly to the 'net
seems like a bad idea). I thought maybe some people here might be interested
in checking it out since it's pretty obscure, if you want an account to play
around, drop me a line and I can hook you up. I don't know of any other
Ridge machines out there (running or not) -- if you have one let me know,
there's very little information out there on these things.
I'd not mind an account!
--
Cory Smelosky
http://gewt.net Personal stuff
http://gimme-sympathy.org Projects
10:32 p.m.
And, of course, right after I send this out, after having run flawlessly
all day, one of the +12V rails has gone poof. Looks like I have some
more debugging on my hands :)
- Josh
On 3/28/15 10:16 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
Hey all --
Last summer I picked up a Ridge 32/330 that became available locally.
This is a fairly obscure early RISC machine intended to be a
competitor to the VAX, it uses a 32-bit CPU at 12.5Mhz built from
discrete components (spanning three large PCBs). Mine's outfitted
with 8mb of ECC memory, Pertec, SMD and SCSI QIC controllers, and
Ethernet.
You can see some pictures of this beast at:
https://plus.google.com/117997069161125071032/posts/JtsR3BokUxp?pid=6063976…
I got it running late last year after rebuilding the QIC tape drive
and dealing with some intermittent failures due to a couple of
low-quality DIP sockets. I now have a set of dedicated 20A circuits
installed in my basement so I can run it for longer periods of time
without worrying about burning my house down, so I'll be running it
for the next couple of weeks just for fun to keep the basement warm
and run up my electrical bill :).
It's currently running RX/V 1.1 (Ridge's UNIX variant) and it's on the
Internet (indirectly, since exposing a 25-year old UNIX directly to
the 'net seems like a bad idea). I thought maybe some people here
might be interested in checking it out since it's pretty obscure, if
you want an account to play around, drop me a line and I can hook you
up. I don't know of any other Ridge machines out there (running or
not) -- if you have one let me know, there's very little information
out there on these things.
I'll add that I'm looking for an external SMD cabinet and cabling so
that I can image the original SMD disk that was in the Ridge when I
got it; it looks like it contains a valid partition table, but it will
not boot. I didn't want to wipe it so the Ridge is currently running
off of a spare drive -- I'd like to hook it up externally to dump an
image from the running RX/V system. If anyone has one to loan
(preferably within driving distance of Seattle) let me know.
Once that's done, it's time to figure out how to get the Eagle that
came with it running again...
And a huge thanks to Al Kossow for archiving the OS media that's on
Bitsavers, without which this machine would be a very large boat
anchor taking up many cubic feet in my basement. (If anyone has any
media or docs for this that aren't on Bitsavers, let me know -- I'm in
particular looking for an ROS distribution on QIC media...)
- Josh
30 Apr
30 Apr
8:38 p.m.
So after having suffered a power supply failure immediately followed by
a disk failure, I'm happy to report that the Ridge is now back up and
running (and has been for the last 24 hours...) If anyone wants an
account to play around on perhaps the only running machine of its kind,
let me know! Maybe it'll stay up for awhile this time :).
- Josh
On 3/28/15 10:32 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
And, of course, right after I send this out, after
having run
flawlessly all day, one of the +12V rails has gone poof. Looks like I
have some more debugging on my hands :)
- Josh
On 3/28/15 10:16 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
Hey all --
Last summer I picked up a Ridge 32/330 that became available
locally. This is a fairly obscure early RISC machine intended to be
a competitor to the VAX, it uses a 32-bit CPU at 12.5Mhz built from
discrete components (spanning three large PCBs). Mine's outfitted
with 8mb of ECC memory, Pertec, SMD and SCSI QIC controllers, and
Ethernet.
You can see some pictures of this beast at:
https://plus.google.com/117997069161125071032/posts/JtsR3BokUxp?pid=6063976…
I got it running late last year after rebuilding the QIC tape drive
and dealing with some intermittent failures due to a couple of
low-quality DIP sockets. I now have a set of dedicated 20A circuits
installed in my basement so I can run it for longer periods of time
without worrying about burning my house down, so I'll be running it
for the next couple of weeks just for fun to keep the basement warm
and run up my electrical bill :).
It's currently running RX/V 1.1 (Ridge's UNIX variant) and it's on
the Internet (indirectly, since exposing a 25-year old UNIX directly
to the 'net seems like a bad idea). I thought maybe some people here
might be interested in checking it out since it's pretty obscure, if
you want an account to play around, drop me a line and I can hook you
up. I don't know of any other Ridge machines out there (running or
not) -- if you have one let me know, there's very little information
out there on these things.
I'll add that I'm looking for an external SMD cabinet and cabling so
that I can image the original SMD disk that was in the Ridge when I
got it; it looks like it contains a valid partition table, but it
will not boot. I didn't want to wipe it so the Ridge is currently
running off of a spare drive -- I'd like to hook it up externally to
dump an image from the running RX/V system. If anyone has one to
loan (preferably within driving distance of Seattle) let me know.
Once that's done, it's time to figure out how to get the Eagle that
came with it running again...
And a huge thanks to Al Kossow for archiving the OS media that's on
Bitsavers, without which this machine would be a very large boat
anchor taking up many cubic feet in my basement. (If anyone has any
media or docs for this that aren't on Bitsavers, let me know -- I'm
in particular looking for an ROS distribution on QIC media...)
- Josh
29 Mar
29 Mar
9:48 a.m.
On 03/29/2015 12:16 AM, Josh Dersch wrote:
Hey all --
Last summer I picked up a Ridge 32/330 that became
available locally. This is a fairly obscure early RISC
machine intended to be a competitor to the VAX, it uses a
32-bit CPU at 12.5Mhz built from discrete components
(spanning three large PCBs). Mine's outfitted with 8mb of
ECC memory, Pertec, SMD and SCSI QIC controllers, and
Ethernet.
You can see some pictures of this beast at:
https://plus.google.com/117997069161125071032/posts/JtsR3BokUxp?pid=6063976…
WOW, this is something like what I was trying to build in
about 1982. See
http://pico-systems.com/stories/1982.html
But, trying to do this all by myself, I kind of got bogged down.
Jon
5:53 p.m.
On 3/29/15 9:48 AM, Jon Elson wrote:
On 03/29/2015 12:16 AM, Josh Dersch wrote:
Wow, that is seriously cool! Sounds like something you need to finish
up one of these days :).
- Josh
Hey all --
Last summer I picked up a Ridge 32/330 that became available
locally. This is a fairly obscure early RISC machine intended to be
a competitor to the VAX, it uses a 32-bit CPU at 12.5Mhz built from
discrete components (spanning three large PCBs). Mine's outfitted
with 8mb of ECC memory, Pertec, SMD and SCSI QIC controllers, and
Ethernet.
You can see some pictures of this beast at:
https://plus.google.com/117997069161125071032/posts/JtsR3BokUxp?pid=6063976…
WOW, this is something like what I was trying to build in about 1982.
See
http://pico-systems.com/stories/1982.html
But, trying to do this all by myself, I kind of got bogged down.
Jon
10:17 p.m.
On 03/29/2015 07:53 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
Wow, that is seriously cool! Sounds like something you
need to finish up one of these days :).
For the reasons I abandoned the project in about 1982, I am
afraid it will stay abandoned.
I did get it working, but it is just a bare 32-bit bit slice
engine, with 1K 96-bit words of control store and 56 32-bit
registers. It ran at 8 MHz for 2-register operations, but
could also do 3-register at 6 MHz. It was controlled by an
S-100 Z-80 system that I no longer have, although it
basically was similar to a parallel port, so could be hooked
to a PC parallel port fairly easily.
I needed to add in some more logic to do 256-way branches
from the op-code, and or-in register fields from the
instruction register. I needed to define a system bus and
build a bus interface, and them build a few simple
peripherals. I already had a SASI-bus hard drive on the
S-100 CP/M system, so I could have built a controller for
that pretty easily. Then a COM controller. I had planned
on making a stripped-down micro-controller for most
peripheral controllers, it would have been about 20 chips,
with 8-bit data path and 16-bits of EPROM for firmware.
Probably could have run at 4 MHz or so.
THEN, the REAL reason I let this drop, is I would need an OS
for a seriously oddball machine. Slightly enhanced 360
instruction set, but a PDP-11 style I/O architecture. I
could build my own OS, but it would likely not be much
better than CP/M, although multiprogramming would be nice.
Then, how about compilers? I recently figured out I
probably could have stolen OS/360 compilers without much
trouble, but even getting those working would take a LOT of
work to understand the various library routines they used
and providing wrappers so the compilers thought they were in
an OS/360 environment.
Geez, a LOT of work!
This would have been an AWESOME home system in 1984 or so,
but would be just a ridiculous conversation piece, now.
I cloned a Nat. Semi. 32016 system, and used that for a
while, but it was glacially slow!
Then, I got a uVAX at home, and ran it for 21 years. I
still have the CPU, but mostly gave away the peripheral boards.
Jon
10:28 a.m.
The Ridge 32 looks pretty cool, but what drew my attention was the box
sitting next to it--a Houdaille mini. I'm familiar with the Houdaille
Strippit turret punches and have a few floppies from them.
http://www.strippittech.com/STRIPPIT_HOUDAILLE_HECC80_CONTROLS.html
Do you know what the box you have was used for?
--Chuck
6:06 p.m.
On 3/29/15 10:28 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
The Ridge 32 looks pretty cool, but what drew my
attention was the box
sitting next to it--a Houdaille mini. I'm familiar with the Houdaille
Strippit turret punches and have a few floppies from them.
http://www.strippittech.com/STRIPPIT_HOUDAILLE_HECC80_CONTROLS.html
Do you know what the box you have was used for?
It's a rebadged PDP-8/L from
late 1969. The guy I got it from says it
was used until the mid-2000s for creating paper tapes that drove CNC
machines. It came with an ASR-33 teletype, its only peripheral, so I
assume the ASR was used for punching the tapes.
After a few small repairs it's running fine, I still need to get the
ASR-33 working properly (still having trouble with the reader-run
control, and everything needs to be cleaned.)
I have more pictures of it here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/117997069161125071032/albums/59003327673…
Thanks,
Josh
--Chuck
6:53 p.m.
On 03/29/2015 06:06 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
It's a rebadged PDP-8/L from late 1969. The guy I
got it from says it
was used until the mid-2000s for creating paper tapes that drove CNC
machines. It came with an ASR-33 teletype, its only peripheral, so I
assume the ASR was used for punching the tapes.
After a few small repairs it's running fine, I still need to get the
ASR-33 working properly (still having trouble with the reader-run
control, and everything needs to be cleaned.)
Grease---wonderful :) Looks like fun when you get it all ticking over.
My last run-in with Houdaille Strippit was for Great Dane Trailers--they
had some sort of 8-bit CP/M controller interfaced to the punch via
RS-232. They wanted to move to a PC platform and use their current
software, so I rigged up an emulator with an emulation for the UART they
were using. They were happy with the result.
Old CNC iron is a lot of fun. I've supplied replacement drives for more
EDM gear than I can remember. The only problem is that I keep getting
promises for 'artwork" from these guys and they never get around do it... :(
--Chuck
11:17 a.m.
On 03/29/2015 12:16 AM, Josh Dersch wrote:
You can see some pictures of this beast at:
Damn, that's nice :) I always think that "old Unix" is much of a muchness
in machines of this era - the OS is probably nothing that special; it's the
hardware that makes them interesting.
I'll add that I'm looking for an external SMD
cabinet and cabling so that I
can image the original SMD disk that was in the Ridge when I got it
Do you know the history of this particular system? I'd say it's definitely
worth doing, just for whatever software and data (which might tell some
sort of "story") is on the drive.
cheers
Jules
6:14 p.m.
On 3/29/15 11:17 AM, Jules Richardson wrote:
It has a Ridge asset
tag, and I was told that it was used internally for
testing database software. That may be what the Fujitsu Eagle in the
second cabinet was for; the drive is currently inoperable (does not spin
up) and it's really a two-person job to even move it around to debug so
that's going to have to wait for a rainy day or three...
- Josh
On 03/29/2015 12:16 AM, Josh Dersch wrote:
It's a pretty crude
UNIX port, they didn't do much with it to pretty it
up or anything, but it's functional.... (the shutdown process is: run
"shutdown" (no args) then wait for the machine to drop to single-user,
run "sync" a couple of times and turn the machine off. Still makes me
nervous every time :).
But the hardware seems to be very well built and an interesting design.
It's also pretty fast (relative to other machines I have from that era)
at least in terms of integer performance based on a very crude benchmark
I wrote :).
It's a shame there doesn't seem to be more out there in terms of
software for this thing. I have enough documentation for the hardware
to make it seem possible to port NetBSD to it, but that would also
require building an entire toolchain for the CPU and, well, if I had
that kind of time...
Now I just need to fix the power supply...
You can see some pictures of this beast at:
Damn, that's nice :) I always think that "old Unix" is much of a
muchness in machines of this era - the OS is probably nothing that
special; it's the hardware that makes them interesting. I'll add that I'm looking for an external
SMD cabinet and cabling so
that I
can image the original SMD disk that was in the Ridge when I got it
Do you know the history of this particular system? I'd say it's
definitely worth doing, just for whatever software and data (which
might tell some sort of "story") is on the drive.
cheers
Jules
3290
days inactive
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days old
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participants (5)
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b4＠gewt.net -
cclist＠sydex.com -
derschjo＠gmail.com -
elson＠pico-systems.com -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com