28 Sep
2007
28 Sep
'07
11:38 a.m.
Hi Dave,
thanks for your email. Given this information, I think
my stuff is not of use for your project...
We have an IBM 1627 plotter which is really just a
private-labelled CalComp
565 plotter. It has a 220mm width plot area and uses presurized ball point
pens.
Yes, this is an early ancestor of the 1038/1039 I have got up and
running.
We have the schematics for the IBM controller, but
don't have one. We'll
need to build our own to connect between the IBM 1620 computer and the
plotter.
I do not know the details on this, but maybe it is easier to
rip an other plotter using stepper motors and connect the clock
and direction signals to the 565 directly. There should be quite
a lot plotter out there suitable for this.
What kind of processor does the IBM controller use? In somewhat
later Calcomp plotters (as mine from 1972) a OPC (online plotter
controller) was included. The original Calcomp PCB contains a
6800 processor which interprets signals from a RS232C interface.
This PCB generates the signals needed to drive the plotter (i.e.
step and direction pulses). Since this OPC was optional it might
be easier to obtain than the IBM part? Maybe they are identical?
For the Calcomp OPC I have got schematics and ROM dumps. It has
the same name as the language it understands "PCI906" and of
course includes a character generator...
The information we are looking for is: 1) detailed
descriptions of the
CalComp HCBS [basic plot] library; 2) the algorithms used by CalComp to
implement the plotting functions; and 3) the vector character font data
that CalComp used.
Sorry, I do not have anything of the mentioned...
We have no application programs for the IBM 1620 that
do plotting [although
we have 200,000 punched cards of programs and data]. We'll be writing the
demo application in addtion to the basic plot library.
That sounds great - I wish
you the very best for this
project,
best regards,
Erik.
-----Original Message-----
From: Erik Baigar [mailto:erik at baigar.de]
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 10:33 PM
To: Sellam Ismail
Cc: Classic Computers Mailing List; dave at kaleidosoft.com; Erik Baigar
Subject: Re: Looking for "Programming CalComp Electromechanical Plotters"
book
Dear Sellam Ismail,
I have got a 1039 plotter which I got from a engineering company years ago.
They used it in the 90ies with DOS based software and they had certain
libraries (I think it was fortran) from Calcomp to use the plotter. These
libraries contained commands for e.g. drawing mathematial diagrams,
characters and so on.
Maybe I somewhere have got the documentation (a few
pages) listing the commands which are implemented in the library.
Is this the kind of stuff you are looking for? What type of plotter do you
have got? Has this one got a digital interface (like e.g. PCI907 or PCI906)?
Do you have got any application software on your 1620?
Best regards,
Erik.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
The IBM 1620 Restoration Team at the Computer
History Museum needs a
copy for a project they are working on to interface a CalComp plotter
to the 1620.
If you've got a copy you can provide (all they need is a photocopy or
scan) please contact Dave Babcock <dave at kaleidosoft.com>.
--
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 ]
28 Sep
28 Sep
12:33 p.m.
New subject: Looking for "Programming CalComp Electromechanical Plotters" book
Erik wrote:
I understand. It's amazing to me how available the document was and yet we
haven't been able to find one yet. CalComp was always very tight with their
source code (a big part of their IP), so I'm not surprised that we can't
find that.
We think that it will be very exciting for museum visitors to see. Most of
the people will never have experienced a plotter.
Thanks,
DaveB
thanks for your email. Given this information, I
think
my stuff is not of use for your project...
To maintain as much historic authencity as we can to the whole system, we'd
rather build a clone of the IBM controller.
We have the schematics for the IBM controller,
but don't have one. We'll
need to build our own to connect between the IBM 1620 computer and the
plotter.
I do not know the details on this, but maybe it is easier to
rip an other plotter using stepper motors and connect the clock
and direction signals to the 565 directly. There should be quite
a lot plotter out there suitable for this. What kind of processor does the IBM controller use? In
somewhat
later Calcomp plotters (as mine from 1972) a OPC (online plotter
controller) was included. The original Calcomp PCB contains a
6800 processor which interprets signals from a RS232C interface.
This PCB generates the signals needed to drive the plotter (i.e.
step and direction pulses). Since this OPC was optional it might
be easier to obtain than the IBM part? Maybe they are identical?
I probably overstated it when I called it a controller. It is discrete
logic that does a little hand shaking with the IBM 1620 to retrieve plot
"digits", a simple decode of the digits, then drive the plotter lines with
the proper timing. It's a very simple mechanism. I was avoiding calling it
an interface because that was how I was referring to the interface circuitry
within the plotter. IBM did the design of the "controller" and used the
"SMS" logic cards that the 1620 is built with. No CalComp circuitry or
design was used.
The IBM 1620 was a 1960-vintage computer. The plotter was available on the
machine in 1962.
For the Calcomp OPC I have got schematics and ROM
dumps. It has
the same name as the language it understands "PCI906" and of
course includes a character generator...
I don't think that this would help us.
The
information we are looking for is: 1) detailed descriptions of the
CalComp HCBS [basic plot] library; 2) the algorithms used by CalComp to
implement the plotting functions; and 3) the vector character font data
that CalComp used.
Sorry, I do not have anything of the mentioned... We have no
application programs for the IBM 1620 that do plotting
[although
we have 200,000 punched cards of programs and data]. We'll be writing
the
demo application in addtion to the basic plot library.
That sounds great - I wish
you the very best for this
project, 
29 Sep
29 Sep
2:15 p.m.
I haven't been following the discussion, so sorry if I missed a bunch,
but I think I have that book from a plotter class I took back in the
70's. Punched cards on a 360 in assembly language calling and called by
fortran programs. Plotter was a small, desktop sized, drum with
continuous feed paper and mag tape input, and it was pretty old in 1975.
Send me an email directly and I can "start" looking for it in storage.
Exotic commands I recall include, pen up, pen down, move (x,y).
28 Sep
28 Sep
9:39 p.m.
I have hung on to something that might be useful it this sort of project. Its some code
I've always wanted to revive, because it was so cool when I first used it.
Its the Versatec Versaplot package. I'm sure its long dead and abandoned by the
company, (do they even exist, it got sucked up by Xerox I think) but perhaps the group can
advise how we go about getting clearance to post code on bitsavers or some such similar
archive.
Its a really cool massive Fortran vector plotting library, with a back end rasterizer
(Laing-Barsky algorithm for clipping into mannageble bands, or bitmap arrays)
Ive ported this to the PC a few times, and it was pretty simple task with Ryan McFarland
Fortran, should be a snap with GNU.
I also have the updated follow on to Brigham Young University MOVIE.BYU. Its a c
Xwindows app for 3d raytracing and animation. I paid for it, ($$$$) a license from BYU,
but they never really supported me so I dont feel too guilty about releasing this one
either. It was Sun, SGI, HP workstation code, but I got it ported to PC unix (real SYSV)
and later Linux.
If anybody knows of any other leading edge graphics from the past, I would be interested
in hearing from them.
Randy
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:38:39 +0200
From: erik at baigar.de
To: dave at kaleidosoft.com
CC: cctalk at classiccmp.org; sellam at vintagetech.com
Subject: RE: Looking for "Programming CalComp Electromechanical Plotters" book
Hi Dave,
thanks for your email. Given this information, I think
my stuff is not of use for your project...
_________________________________________________________________
Explore the seven wonders of the world
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=7+wonders+world&mkt=en-US&form…
We have an IBM 1627 plotter which is really just
a private-labelled CalComp
565 plotter. It has a 220mm width plot area and uses presurized ball point
pens.
Yes, this is an early ancestor of the 1038/1039 I have got up and
running.
We have the schematics for the IBM controller,
but don't have one. We'll
need to build our own to connect between the IBM 1620 computer and the
plotter.
I do not know the details on this, but maybe it is easier to
rip an other plotter using stepper motors and connect the clock
and direction signals to the 565 directly. There should be quite
a lot plotter out there suitable for this.
What kind of processor does the IBM controller use? In somewhat
later Calcomp plotters (as mine from 1972) a OPC (online plotter
controller) was included. The original Calcomp PCB contains a
6800 processor which interprets signals from a RS232C interface.
This PCB generates the signals needed to drive the plotter (i.e.
step and direction pulses). Since this OPC was optional it might
be easier to obtain than the IBM part? Maybe they are identical?
For the Calcomp OPC I have got schematics and ROM dumps. It has
the same name as the language it understands "PCI906" and of
course includes a character generator...
The information we are looking for is: 1)
detailed descriptions of the
CalComp HCBS [basic plot] library; 2) the algorithms used by CalComp to
implement the plotting functions; and 3) the vector character font data
that CalComp used.
Sorry, I do not have anything of the mentioned...
We have no application programs for the IBM 1620
that do plotting [although
we have 200,000 punched cards of programs and data]. We'll be writing the
demo application in addtion to the basic plot library.
That sounds great - I wish
you the very best for this
project,
best regards,
Erik.
-----Original Message-----
From: Erik Baigar [mailto:erik at baigar.de]
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 10:33 PM
To: Sellam Ismail
Cc: Classic Computers Mailing List; dave at kaleidosoft.com; Erik Baigar
Subject: Re: Looking for "Programming CalComp Electromechanical Plotters"
book
Dear Sellam Ismail,
I have got a 1039 plotter which I got from a engineering company years ago.
They used it in the 90ies with DOS based software and they had certain
libraries (I think it was fortran) from Calcomp to use the plotter. These
libraries contained commands for e.g. drawing mathematial diagrams,
characters and so on.
Maybe I somewhere have got the documentation (a few
pages) listing the commands which are implemented in the library.
Is this the kind of stuff you are looking for? What type of plotter do you
have got? Has this one got a digital interface (like e.g. PCI907 or PCI906)?
Do you have got any application software on your 1620?
Best regards,
Erik.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
The IBM 1620 Restoration Team at the Computer
History Museum needs a
copy for a project they are working on to interface a CalComp plotter
to the 1620.
If you've got a copy you can provide (all they need is a photocopy or
scan) please contact Dave Babcock <dave at kaleidosoft.com>.
--
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 ]
9:54 p.m.
New subject: Looking for "Programming CalComp Electromechanical Plotters" book
Randy, I would love to see both Versaplot and MOVIE.BYU! A coworker
ported MOVIE.BYU to the ESV when I worked at E&S :-).
In article <BAY120-W182297E09062084E7FD10EBAB30 at phx.gbl>,
Randy Dawson <rdawson16 at hotmail.com> writes:
Its the Versatec Versaplot package. [...]
I also have the updated follow on to Brigham Young University MOVIE.BYU.
[...]
If anybody knows of any other leading edge graphics from the past, I would =
be interested in hearing from them.
There is also PLOT10 the Tektronix plotting package. Then there are
the standards based things like CORE, GKS, PHIGS, PHIGS-PLUS. I got a
giant pile of GKS for VMS manuals in a VAX/VMS doc set that I
purchased off ebay (12 cardboard boxes of manuals). I have an Evans &
Sutherland ESV workstation that does PEX and graphics terminals from
Tektronix, HP and Megatek. I have an HP graphics generator that
attaches to an oscilloscope. I have the requisite SGI machines too:
Personal Iris, Indigo, Indigo^2, Indy, Onyx, and Onyx2.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
29 Sep
29 Sep
1:36 a.m.
New subject: Looking for "Programming CalComp Electromechanical Plotters" book
Richard, tell me how to proceed - damn the torpedoes, I can send these packages to you
offlist. Send your email.
I am at rdawson AT ieee.org
The revamped MOVIE.BYU was known as CQUEL.BYU. I sort of twisted the developers arms to
give me the source, and then set up the business model to buy it. The story is, it never
really got finished, they worked on a windows port for a little while, wrote their own GUI
"OwenLook".
Somehow, later they got sucked into the 3d gradient surface array code for groundwater
modeling and visualization. I Lost them due to their interest (corp funding?) in this,
and they abandoned CQUEL.BYU
The thing ran fine under linux, there is a substantial amount of the code devoted to
beveled buttons, radio knobs. It did not suck in anything but xlib, the GUI was all done
within. The raytracer works OK, the 3D scene editor is pretty lame by todays standards
(Maya, Blender)
The scripting language was pretty good however. I used it and some of the quaternion code
to learn from and later write the PC COASTER! roller coaster simulator. First months
sales $245,000.....back in the day when I was fab! There is a patent on a piece of the
code, for 3D deformation, but I think this is standard knowledge now. Its in all the Maya
stuff, to do organic things like facial expressions and character deformation.
I too, had a stable of SGI in a carpeted air conditioned garage. Most of it came from
Compaq after the HP acquisition. My hero story on the 4D was bringing it up. You would
plug it in, it would boot and the graphics screen would come up, with a background Compaq
logo, and standard Xlogin enter password.
LOCKED OUT!!! What to do? from the boot, there was a debug monitor, cant remember, rim
or something like that. I was able to pipe the hard drive to the RS-232, then capture it
on the PC as a file, and search for the encrypted password string files.
With tools we all know, and a combination of a dictonary attack and a touch typist move
of the home fingers from asdf jkl; to qwert uiop I did get it with a dictionary attack.
That took my PC all day crunching for the search, then:
annamarie PASSWORD FOUND
Thats hacking. I cant tell you how many beers and evenings in the garage it took, lost
trails and to think up this solution, but the supreme satisfaction of entering the
password, and having the machine up was worth it all.
The source code to 'Chicago' (windows 3.0) was on here, but, I have lost it and
the machine. (And the G.F. due to the hacking, beer drinking in the garage and I'll be
in soon...., honey)
Alias was there too, I had always thought it was wonderful from what I had seen and heard
of it and Wavefront. I could not figure out the old GUI user interface, just barely able
to load up a couple of models on the machine, of PC cases, they looked like injection
molding renderings.
Graphics is fun,
Let me know what you are up to. Sorry for the long post. This, however is one of many
stories I have about the early days of CG....
Randy
PS I have Dore' running too, the Stardent/Ardent package and all source. Its in the
BSD PORTS tree, builds just fine....
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
From: legalize at xmission.com
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:54:33 -0600
Subject: Re: Looking for "Programming CalComp Electromechanical Plotters" book
Randy, I would love to see both Versaplot and MOVIE.BYU! A coworker
ported MOVIE.BYU to the ESV when I worked at E&S :-).
In article <BAY120-W182297E09062084E7FD10EBAB30 at phx.gbl>,
Randy Dawson <rdawson16 at hotmail.com> writes:
_________________________________________________________________
Explore the seven wonders of the world
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=7+wonders+world&mkt=en-US&form…
Its the Versatec Versaplot package. [...]
I also have the updated follow on to Brigham Young University MOVIE.BYU.
[...]
If anybody knows of any other leading edge graphics from the past, I would =
be interested in hearing from them.
There is also PLOT10 the Tektronix plotting package. Then there are
the standards based things like CORE, GKS, PHIGS, PHIGS-PLUS. I got a
giant pile of GKS for VMS manuals in a VAX/VMS doc set that I
purchased off ebay (12 cardboard boxes of manuals). I have an Evans &
Sutherland ESV workstation that does PEX and graphics terminals from
Tektronix, HP and Megatek. I have an HP graphics generator that
attaches to an oscilloscope. I have the requisite SGI machines too:
Personal Iris, Indigo, Indigo^2, Indy, Onyx, and Onyx2.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
6141
days inactive
6142
days old
5 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
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dave＠kaleidosoft.com -
erik＠baigar.de -
legalize＠xmission.com -
mikeford＠socal.rr.com -
rdawson16＠hotmail.com