12 Dec
2013
12 Dec
'13
1:48 p.m.
(I'm not subscribed to the list, but I'm passing this along because I
thought it would be of interest to list members.)
The Chicago Transit Authority is auctioning off a whole load of
miscellaneous stuff (including a couple of rail cars!). One of the items
being auctioned is what appears to be an Intel MDS 225 "Blue Box" (4 MHz
8085A system) complete with an MDS 720 disk expansion unit and some sort of
Control Data hard disk.
The specific lot is here:
http://ricklevin.nextlot.com/public/lot/15005194?section=photos
No idea whether any of the hardware is functional.
Bids for the whole lot currently stand at $60. Auction for this lot ends
December 18th (Wednesday), 11:10 AM local time (Central Standard Time).
More info on the auction can be found via the link above.
General news story on the auction:
http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20131212/downtown/cta-selling-bus-signs-trai…
Colin Howell
12 Dec
12 Dec
4:14 p.m.
On 12/12/13 1:48 PM, Colin Howell wrote:
The Chicago Transit Authority is auctioning off a whole load of
miscellaneous stuff (including a couple of rail cars!). One of the items
being auctioned is what appears to be an Intel MDS 225 "Blue Box" (4 MHz
8085A system) complete with an MDS 720 disk expansion unit and some sort of
Control Data hard disk.
It's a 10 meg CDC Hawk with packs. Someone should grab it for that. I've seen
lots of MDS 225's but not one with a Hawk in a long time.
4:29 p.m.
On Dec 12, 2013, at 4:14 PM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 12/12/13 1:48 PM, Colin Howell wrote:
It looks like it's missing the keyboard though. Otherwise it looks really nice!
TTFN - Guy
The Chicago Transit Authority is auctioning off a whole load of
miscellaneous stuff (including a couple of rail cars!). One of the items
being auctioned is what appears to be an Intel MDS 225 "Blue Box" (4 MHz
8085A system) complete with an MDS 720 disk expansion unit and some sort of
Control Data hard disk.
It's a 10 meg CDC Hawk with packs. Someone should grab it for that. I've seen
lots of MDS 225's but not one with a Hawk in a long time. 
5:28 p.m.
The original key board ( although nice ) is just a parallel out keyboard.
Most any such keyboard would work ( may need strobe inversion ).
Dwight
Subject: Re: Intel MDS 225 system being auctioned by
Chicago Transit Authority
From: ggs at shiresoft.com
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2013 16:29:53 -0800
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
On Dec 12, 2013, at 4:14 PM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 12/12/13 1:48 PM, Colin Howell wrote:
It looks like it's missing the keyboard though. Otherwise it looks really nice!
TTFN - Guy
The Chicago Transit Authority is auctioning off a whole load of
miscellaneous stuff (including a couple of rail cars!). One of the items
being auctioned is what appears to be an Intel MDS 225 "Blue Box" (4 MHz
8085A system) complete with an MDS 720 disk expansion unit and some sort of
Control Data hard disk.
It's a 10 meg CDC Hawk with packs. Someone should grab it for that. I've seen
lots of MDS 225's but not one with a Hawk in a long time. 
5:50 p.m.
dwight said the following on 12/12/2013 8:28 PM:
The original key board ( although nice ) is just a
parallel out keyboard.
Most any such keyboard would work ( may need strobe inversion ).
Dwight
I don't know if it is that easy. The keyboard has an 8741 programmed on
it. The keys themselves are a simple matrix, but the 8751 must have
some sort of protocol to talk to the IOC board (back panel board).
13 Dec
13 Dec
2:46 p.m.
The original key board ( although nice ) is just a parallel out keyboard.
Most any such keyboard would work ( may need strobe inversion ).
If you don't have such a keyboard, you could probably write a trivial
program for an old-ish PC compatible to read characters from its keyboard
and use 9 outputs on the parallel port (say the 8 data lins and Stb/) to
provide the parallel output to the MDS.
Yes it would be a kludge, and you'd probably want to make something
smaller and simpler for use, but to get the machine working it would do.
-tony
14 Dec
14 Dec
11:35 a.m.
To bad the parallel port has also gone the way of the serial port.
I've used the parallel port with a paper tape reader that had
a parallel out. One needs a bidirectional port, connectors and wire.
It allowed me to save a lot of tapes that were borrowed.
Dwight
From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk
Subject: Re: Intel MDS 225 system being auctioned by Chicago Transit Authority
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2013 22:46:08 +0000
The original key board ( although nice ) is just a parallel out keyboard.
Most any such keyboard would work ( may need strobe inversion ).
If you don't have such a keyboard, you could probably write a trivial
program for an old-ish PC compatible to read characters from its keyboard
and use 9 outputs on the parallel port (say the 8 data lins and Stb/) to
provide the parallel output to the MDS.
Yes it would be a kludge, and you'd probably want to make something
smaller and simpler for use, but to get the machine working it would do.
-tony
2:02 p.m.
To bad the parallel port has also gone the way of the serial port.
Indeed. IIRC those USB to Centroincs printer 'cables' don;t allow you to
toggle individual port lines like that.
That's why I said an old-ish PC. Meaning one with a parallel port, not
(jsut) USB.
I've used the parallel port with a paper tape
reader that had
a parallel out. One needs a bidirectional port, connectors and wire.
It allowed me to save a lot of tapes that were borrowed.
I built a little interface for a Trend UDR700 reader that connected it to
a unidirecitoanl parallel port. Basically, I sued a 74x157 mux to read
the 8 data liens form thereader onot 4 of the handshake input lines of
the port in 2 halves. The last input line was 'data ready;. Some of the
outputs wre used to step the reader to the next character (I added a
flip-flop, triggered by the strobve lien of the reader to control the
reader run line), and to select which nybble would be read in.
-tony
12 Dec
12 Dec
6:01 p.m.
The Chicago Transit Authority is auctioning off a
whole load of
miscellaneous stuff (including a couple of rail cars!). One of the items
being auctioned is what appears to be an Intel MDS 225 "Blue Box" (4 MHz
8085A system) complete with an MDS 720 disk expansion unit and some sort of
Control Data hard disk.
The specific lot is here:
http://ricklevin.nextlot.com/public/lot/15005194?section=photos
Looks to have lots of multibus cards in the slots. Two for the double
density floppy controller. I would guess two for the Hawk drive
(although I've never had any experience with that particular
combination). The internal floppy drive is converted to double density.
In the expansion chassis I would guess there is some sort of in-circuit
emulator. I don't know how to tell what one it might be, or even two.
It'll probably cost a couple hundred to ship it, maybe more. Those
things are heavy!
Dave
8:08 p.m.
I don't recall what hard drive it was that we used when back at
Intel. We used a number of Series IIs and MDS-800s. We had some
type of network so that hard drive could be shared between
machines.
The drive had one removable platter and one fix of 5 Megs each.
We salvaged the drive from scrap that was going to be junked.
It had had water in it while running and it had destroyed the fixed
platter. We cleaned up the heads and took a platter from a spare
cartridge to bring it back to life.
We used it for the programs that we regularly used. Editor, assemblers
and PLM compilers. Our favorite editor was called X1.11.
The Series IIs were upgraded with better IOC software and even a
8086 boards. We had floppies using the M2FM ( double boards
mentioned previously )
I was responsible for test programs for the analog board, as well as
the UPP.
Dwight
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2013 21:01:51 -0500
From: dmabry at mich.com
To:
Subject: Re: Intel MDS 225 system being auctioned by Chicago Transit Authority
The Chicago Transit Authority is auctioning off a
whole load of
miscellaneous stuff (including a couple of rail cars!). One of the items
being auctioned is what appears to be an Intel MDS 225 "Blue Box" (4 MHz
8085A system) complete with an MDS 720 disk expansion unit and some sort of
Control Data hard disk.
The specific lot is here:
http://ricklevin.nextlot.com/public/lot/15005194?section=photos
Looks to have lots of multibus cards in the slots. Two for the double
density floppy controller. I would guess two for the Hawk drive
(although I've never had any experience with that particular
combination). The internal floppy drive is converted to double density.
In the expansion chassis I would guess there is some sort of in-circuit
emulator. I don't know how to tell what one it might be, or even two.
It'll probably cost a couple hundred to ship it, maybe more. Those
things are heavy!
Dave
9:01 p.m.
On 12/12/2013 08:08 PM, dwight wrote:
I don't recall what hard drive it was that we used
when back at
Intel. We used a number of Series IIs and MDS-800s. We had some
type of network so that hard drive could be shared between
machines.
I do recall that the hard disk for the MDS was *expensive*, something
into the low 5 digits. But, in general, that was true of any of the
stuff that was MDS-related.
It was possible to build your own MDS-ish system if you picked up one
the of the Multibus card cages, supplied your own power supply and used
Intel's cards to populate the system. We had a system that booted
ISIS-II just fine constructed that way.
One thing that I remember about ISIS-II is that there were no "builtin"
commands--everything loaded from disk, even COPY. The syntax was a bit
more intuitive than than CP/M-; e.g. to copy a file from one drive to
another, it was "COPY :F0:THISFILE TO :F1:" I also recall that location
4000H was a magic location in ISIS--where user programs got loaded, maybe?
--Chuck
10:05 p.m.
Not meaning to hijack, but FYI:
If anyone near the St. Paul / Mpls Twin City area is looking for an
MDS-225/MDS-800 system (white box / blue box), please get in-touch. It's
been sitting for a decade, but does include quite a few ISIS 8-in floppies,
and an Intel ICE hardware setup. Came out of a telecom design firm in
Wisconsin - it was stored after they moved to Microchip PIC stuff.
Last time I offered it for sale (a decade ago), it sold on eBay to some
dope who couldn't grasp the concept of "LOCAL PICKUP ONLY".
So here it remains.. still, looking for a new home. Cash or very limited
swaps.
-L
On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 11:01 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 12/12/2013 08:08 PM, dwight wrote:
I don't recall what hard drive it was that we
used when back at
Intel. We used a number of Series IIs and MDS-800s. We had some
type of network so that hard drive could be shared between
machines.
I do recall that the hard disk for the MDS was *expensive*, something into
the low 5 digits. But, in general, that was true of any of the stuff that
was MDS-related.
It was possible to build your own MDS-ish system if you picked up one the
of the Multibus card cages, supplied your own power supply and used Intel's
cards to populate the system. We had a system that booted ISIS-II just
fine constructed that way.
One thing that I remember about ISIS-II is that there were no "builtin"
commands--everything loaded from disk, even COPY. The syntax was a bit
more intuitive than than CP/M-; e.g. to copy a file from one drive to
another, it was "COPY :F0:THISFILE TO :F1:" I also recall that location
4000H was a magic location in ISIS--where user programs got loaded, maybe?
--Chuck
2 Jan
2 Jan
1:46 p.m.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 3:48 PM, Colin Howell <colin.d.howell at gmail.com> wrote:
The Chicago Transit Authority is auctioning off a
whole load of
miscellaneous stuff (including a couple of rail cars!). One of the items
being auctioned is what appears to be an Intel MDS 225 "Blue Box" (4 MHz
8085A system) complete with an MDS 720 disk expansion unit and some sort of
Control Data hard disk.
The specific lot is here:
http://ricklevin.nextlot.com/public/lot/15005194?section=photos
Despite being local *and* placing a low bid on the lot, I completely
dropped the ball (mouse?) and forgot about the closing.
Did anyone here end up with this fine blue machine?
3790
days inactive
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12 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
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aek＠bitsavers.org -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cclist＠sydex.com -
colin.d.howell＠gmail.com -
dkelvey＠hotmail.com -
dmabry＠mich.com -
drlegendre＠gmail.com -
ggs＠shiresoft.com -
silent700＠gmail.com