Hi,[back to home]> It is difficult for me to give a precise date. I don't have any | Thank. I presume ECN means PCB = Printed Circuit Board. ECN: Engineering change notice. Indicates revision of PCB. | I should have made it clear that it is the 1301 which is the faster | of the two. For example a 48 bit decimal (i.e. 12 digits) add to / | subtract from a register takes 21 microseconds. The ODP-505 is a pure binary machine, not designed for arithmetics, statistical purposes or BCD computations.It is a real time (!!!) computer. Get some datas (voltages, frequencies, switch states, motor speed, temperature...) compare to thresholds or values, and speed up / slow down motor, or move a cadmium bar (?) in a nuclear reactor...> What is the manufacturing date of your ICT 1301? | Actually I have two. Serial number 6 was the first one to be sold and | was installed in 1962 and it is this one which is assembled and | works, though not all the peripherals are functional. Serial number | 75 I would guess was made in 1963. I have a few parts of serial | number 155, which I would think would be from 1965 when the machines | were largely replaced by the ICT 1900 series. Designing of the | machines was started in the late 1950s, and many of the engineering | drawings have initial revisions from that period. | The architecture of your machine reminds me of the first machine I | was allowed to operate. It was an 18 bit binary machine, it had 8k of | memory built in, expandable with external modules and was made by the | Airborne Computing Division (ACD) of Elliotts, it was an Elliott 920B | and was a compact, flyable version of the commercial Elliott 903. | There had been an earlier model 920A which I think would have been | Germanium and was roughly the size and shape of a carpenters work | bench. This may have been contemporary with your earlier machine I | think. Unfortunately I never saw one in the flesh, but there was a | bench in the computer room which I found out later, was the empty | chassis of a 920A. Behind the bench was a large panel full of | electrical 'chocolate strip' connectors where the analogue and | digital input and output signals of the 920A could be connected up. | Apparently some of the analogue outputs had been connected up to an | oscilloscope to provide a visual display unit, though it used a fair | bit of processor time to keep it refreshed, even with the long | persistence phosphor of an oscilloscope. The panel had been covered | with board with pegs to hold mylar paper tapes and until the day it | was scrapped I had not seen what was behind it. Very interesting!There are some video connector in the earlier machine and the Serel companywas specialized in high tech video solutions. I have read somewhere in docs, thatthis computer have a screen output...I have found, last week a small notice describing microprogramming on ODP-505.http://pichotjm.free.fr/Serel/ODP505/MicroProgrammation/MicroProgrammation.html(doc found in photomultiplier doc!)I have found commercial document describing displays and analog memories...I don't know the date... (1970?) I have to study these documents... | What is involved in the restoration? Do you intend to make it work, | this would be very hard without the schematics.As you know, i am alone, here. I want to make an esthetic restoration:Photos and notes, dismantle, photos and notes, wash, dry, fix the rust, protect with Rustol, photos an reassemble. I hope to be capable to do that... may be one year, may be two... May be some reverse engineering to get 2 or 3 schematics. (need one week for a board! I have 2 boards in process...)JM Pichot