13 Oct
2016
13 Oct
'16
9:01 a.m.
I'm curious what the Systems 32/77 is..
Wasn't Gould SEL? maybe an SEL system?
The 32/77-series was a 32-bit machine implemented in ECL, based on
earlier SEL designs, but is definitely Gould in design/manufacture.
Some of the machines in the series had a very powerful (for the time)
floating point unit (known as the IPU) that operated in tandem with the
main CPU that vastly increased the number-crunching power available
The machines were mainly intended for real-time control applications (as
used in the flight sim applications in the auction)
The machine ran a real-time executive called MPX-32.
More information: http://www.encore-support.com/htmls/32_77.htm
Years ago, I had some experience with these machines. They were quite
powerful for their time, and were also workhorses that just ran and ran.
Very robust design.
These are neat machines, and I hope that they end up in the hands of
someone that can care for them rather than ending up scrap.
--
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
9:23 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
On Thu, 13 Oct 2016, Al Kossow wrote:
On 10/13/16 9:01 AM, Rick Bensene wrote:
That's what I said when I quit bidding at $180.
I had one of those moments where I went "You know, I'd like to spend more,
but I have a building full of computers, I can't really fit any more, and
at $200+ it starts getting harder to justify it to the wife."
Which is usually a sign it's getting harder to justify to myself and my
conscience is telling me it's time to fold.
But I sure hope it went to a collector.
(It's not often I find computer stuff within 2.5 hours of my home, too.)
- JP
These are neat machines, and I hope that they end
up in the hands of
someone that can care for them rather than ending up scrap.
hope h****t was one of us :-) 
9:30 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
On 10/13/16 9:14 AM, Al Kossow wrote:
On 10/13/16 9:01 AM, Rick Bensene wrote:
I ended up with the TI-980. The 11/45's got out of range for me...
9 minutes left on the other Gould 32/77; hope someone here ends up with
it...
- Josh
These are neat machines, and I hope that they end
up in the hands of
someone that can care for them rather than ending up scrap.
hope h****t was one of us :-)
9:39 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
Looks like one person got both the 11/45s for $4500 total. Too much for me,
but that didn't seem like a bad deal.
Kyle
10:07 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
$4500! Is it likely a collector or someone that would be using these things somewhere?
I don't know my PDP stuff well.. the 11/45 is from around the early 70s right?
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Kyle Owen
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2016 9:40 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
Looks like one person got both the 11/45s for $4500 total. Too much for me, but that
didn't seem like a bad deal.
Kyle
10:27 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
I don't know my PDP stuff well.. the 11/45 is from
around the early 70s right?
1972 I think. It's a very nice machine, all TTL (over 1000 ICs in CPU, MMU
and floating point processor). I suppose the 11/70 is even more fun
(with 22 bit addressing, etc) but the 11/45 is one of my all-time favourites.
-tony
6:11 p.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77
On 10/13/2016 12:27 PM, tony duell wrote:
Yup, we got an 11/45 used and ran RSX-11M with about 4 users
on it, it worked VERY well, given the limited memory we had
on it. But, of course, when we moved up to a VAX, that was
even better!
Jon
I don't know my PDP stuff well.. the 11/45 is
from around the early 70s right?
1972 I think. It's a very nice machine, all
TTL (over 1000 ICs in CPU, MMU
and floating point processor). I suppose the 11/70 is even more fun
(with 22 bit addressing, etc) but the 11/45 is one of my all-time favourites.
-tony
11:06 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
But then add the "Internet Fee" and Sales Tax (read the Terms and Conditions)
for a ~26% mark-up from the closing price. So ~$5670.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Brad H
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2016 1:07 PM
To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
Subject: RE: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
$4500! Is it likely a collector or someone that would be using these things somewhere?
I don't know my PDP stuff well.. the 11/45 is from around the early 70s right?
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Kyle Owen
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2016 9:40 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
Looks like one person got both the 11/45s for $4500 total. Too much for me, but that
didn't seem like a bad deal.
Kyle
8:34 p.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
On 10/13/2016 9:01 AM, Rick Bensene wrote:
Well... with a momentary lapse of reason, I bought the Gould / SEL
system. It won't go to scrap.
No idea how I'm going to get it, and what I'm going to do with it, but
after reading about it last night,
I thought it might be fun to play with. We'll see...
Bob
--
Vintage computers and electronics
www.dvq.com
www.tekmuseum.com
www.decmuseum.org
I'm
curious what the Systems 32/77 is..
Wasn't Gould SEL? maybe an SEL system?
The 32/77-series was a 32-bit machine implemented in ECL, based on
earlier SEL designs, but is definitely Gould in design/manufacture.
Some of the machines in the series had a very powerful (for the time)
floating point unit (known as the IPU) that operated in tandem with the
main CPU that vastly increased the number-crunching power available
The machines were mainly intended for real-time control applications (as
used in the flight sim applications in the auction)
The machine ran a real-time executive called MPX-32.
More information: http://www.encore-support.com/htmls/32_77.htm
Years ago, I had some experience with these machines. They were quite
powerful for their time, and were also workhorses that just ran and ran.
Very robust design.
These are neat machines, and I hope that they end up in the hands of
someone that can care for them rather than ending up scrap.
--
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
9:48 p.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
On 10/13/16 8:34 PM, Bob Rosenbloom wrote:
On 10/13/2016 9:01 AM, Rick Bensene wrote:
Well... with a momentary lapse of reason, I bought the Gould / SEL
system. It won't go to scrap.
No idea how I'm going to get it, and what I'm going to do with it, but
after reading about it last night,
I thought it might be fun to play with. We'll see...
Very nice! Glad it's not going to scrappers, I was seriously debating
bidding on one of the two systems but I just don't have the room. I'd
love to see pictures of this thing once you manage to get it back to
your place.
- Josh
I'm
curious what the Systems 32/77 is..
Wasn't Gould SEL? maybe an SEL system?
The 32/77-series was a 32-bit machine implemented in ECL, based on
earlier SEL designs, but is definitely Gould in design/manufacture.
Some of the machines in the series had a very powerful (for the time)
floating point unit (known as the IPU) that operated in tandem with the
main CPU that vastly increased the number-crunching power available
The machines were mainly intended for real-time control applications (as
used in the flight sim applications in the auction)
The machine ran a real-time executive called MPX-32.
More information: http://www.encore-support.com/htmls/32_77.htm
Years ago, I had some experience with these machines. They were quite
powerful for their time, and were also workhorses that just ran and ran.
Very robust design.
These are neat machines, and I hope that they end up in the hands of
someone that can care for them rather than ending up scrap.
--
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
Bob
14 Oct
14 Oct
5:43 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
I have been given an lot of SEL software and documentation, along with a simulator
Now, I need to get off my butt and put it all on line.
Thank you for saving the system, Bob.
On 10/13/16 8:34 PM, Bob Rosenbloom wrote:
On 10/13/2016 9:01 AM, Rick Bensene wrote:
Well... with a momentary lapse of reason, I bought the Gould / SEL system. It won't
go to scrap.
No idea how I'm going to get it, and what I'm going to do with it, but after
reading about it last night,
I thought it might be fun to play with. We'll see...
Bob
I'm
curious what the Systems 32/77 is..
Wasn't Gould SEL? maybe an SEL system?
The 32/77-series was a 32-bit machine implemented in ECL, based on
earlier SEL designs, but is definitely Gould in design/manufacture.
Some of the machines in the series had a very powerful (for the time)
floating point unit (known as the IPU) that operated in tandem with the
main CPU that vastly increased the number-crunching power available
The machines were mainly intended for real-time control applications (as
used in the flight sim applications in the auction)
The machine ran a real-time executive called MPX-32.
More information: http://www.encore-support.com/htmls/32_77.htm
Years ago, I had some experience with these machines. They were quite
powerful for their time, and were also workhorses that just ran and ran.
Very robust design.
These are neat machines, and I hope that they end up in the hands of
someone that can care for them rather than ending up scrap.
--
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
7:29 p.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
I used most of the SEL/Gould/Encore machines. The 32/77 was an original
SEL design, from before Gould bought them. It ran MPX-32, their real-time
OS. TTL based. The 32/87 was ECL, in a much bigger cabinet. They made
slight hardware changes to the 32/77 and 32/75 and released them as the
PowerNode PN7000 and PN5000, which ran UTX-32, their Unix port. IIRC, we
took a few 77's and changed one board in the chassis to turn them into
PowerNodes.
The instruction set was more RISC-y than CISC-y. The floating point was
base 16 exponent rather than base 2. Because of the way they did
normalization, there were a lot of bit patterns which were impossible
results. I made a lot of use of those to represent special values.
I'm glad it was saved.
Bob: I may have a lot of software for it, if I can find the tapes and they
are still readable. I even got hold of their secret C compiler port.
On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 8:43 AM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
I have been given an lot of SEL software and
documentation, along with a
simulator
Now, I need to get off my butt and put it all on line.
Thank you for saving the system, Bob.
On 10/13/16 8:34 PM, Bob Rosenbloom wrote:
On 10/13/2016 9:01 AM, Rick Bensene wrote:
Well... with a momentary lapse of reason, I bought the Gould / SEL
system. It
won't go to scrap.
I'm
curious what the Systems 32/77 is..
Wasn't Gould SEL? maybe an SEL system?
The 32/77-series was a 32-bit machine implemented in ECL, based on
earlier SEL designs, but is definitely Gould in design/manufacture.
Some of the machines in the series had a very powerful (for the time)
floating point unit (known as the IPU) that operated in tandem with the
main CPU that vastly increased the number-crunching power available
The machines were mainly intended for real-time control applications (as
used in the flight sim applications in the auction)
The machine ran a real-time executive called MPX-32.
More information: http://www.encore-support.com/htmls/32_77.htm
Years ago, I had some experience with these machines. They were quite
powerful for their time, and were also workhorses that just ran and ran.
Very robust design.
These are neat machines, and I hope that they end up in the hands of
someone that can care for them rather than ending up scrap.
--
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
No idea how I'm going to get it, and what
I'm going to do with it, but
after reading about it last night,
I thought it might be fun to play with. We'll
see...
Bob
8:15 p.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
On 10/14/2016 7:29 PM, Tony Aiuto wrote:
I used most of the SEL/Gould/Encore machines. The
32/77 was an original
SEL design, from before Gould bought them. It ran MPX-32, their real-time
OS. TTL based. The 32/87 was ECL, in a much bigger cabinet. They made
slight hardware changes to the 32/77 and 32/75 and released them as the
PowerNode PN7000 and PN5000, which ran UTX-32, their Unix port. IIRC, we
took a few 77's and changed one board in the chassis to turn them into
PowerNodes.
The instruction set was more RISC-y than CISC-y. The floating point was
base 16 exponent rather than base 2. Because of the way they did
normalization, there were a lot of bit patterns which were impossible
results. I made a lot of use of those to represent special values.
I'm glad it was saved.
Bob: I may have a lot of software for it, if I can find the tapes and they
are still readable. I even got hold of their secret C compiler port.
That's great! Might actually end up being a useful system. It will be
interesting to see if any
peripherals are in the cabinets. Are they multiprocessor capable? The
photos had two
control panels on one of the cabinets implying two systems, or two CPU's
in the cabinet.
Bob
--
Vintage computers and electronics
www.dvq.com
www.tekmuseum.com
www.decmuseum.org
15 Oct
15 Oct
5:08 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
On 15 October 2016 at 03:29, Tony Aiuto <tony.aiuto at gmail.com> wrote:
I used most of the SEL/Gould/Encore machines. The
32/77 was an original
SEL design, from before Gould bought them. It ran MPX-32, their real-time
OS. TTL based. The 32/87 was ECL, in a much bigger cabinet. They made
slight hardware changes to the 32/77 and 32/75 and released them as the
PowerNode PN7000 and PN5000, which ran UTX-32, their Unix port. IIRC, we
took a few 77's and changed one board in the chassis to turn them into
PowerNodes.
Random Gould side reference.
We had a PN9080 and PN6040 at City University as the main systems in the
late 90's (accessed via the usual mix of ADM3As, ADM5s, some Sun3s and a
whole bunch of Whitechapel MG-1s, ans some colour terminals of which I
cannot recall the name, but I remember them having a setting where they
would auto colour characters based on their clas - alpha one colour,
numbers another, and two or three other colours for the rest of ASCII)
I remember looking at the filesystem and thinking "Mmm, on disk formats
with 32 bit timestamps but with padding ready to be taken to 64 bit when
needed, nice future proofing".
When the CS department finally moved away from their own 6040 it was left
forgotten in a room over the summer - in the autumn the aircon was found to
have failed, overflowed and the machine was sitting there with water all
over the floor and in a steam bath. Still running fine. Quite robust that
ECL :)
10:07 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Brownlee" <abs at
absd.org>
We had a PN9080 and PN6040 at City University as the
main systems in the
late 90's
Ah, yes, "The Magic Roundabout" - was three 6040s and one
9080. I still
possess the Gould nameplate from the 9000.
They were the last machines we had that we though of as mainframes (even
if many would call them minis - but I think the racks were wider than 19"
so they clearly weren't minis!)
There's some interest in the story of how this system came together:
we did have a Honeywell dual 66/60 which was supplemented by the 9000 as
a time-sharing system when we had had it 5 years.
After two more years we calculated that we could buy and maintain the
trio of 6000s for less than the maintenance cost for the three years
that the Honeywell was due to remain and gain a noiceable increase in
computing power (and a noticeable decrease in power consumption) by
doing so ? and actually managed to convince the bean counters of this.
(accessed via the usual mix of ADM3As, ADM5s, some
Sun3s and a
whole bunch of Whitechapel MG-1s, ans some colour terminals of which I
cannot recall the name, but I remember them having a setting where they
would auto colour characters based on their clas - alpha one colour,
numbers another, and two or three other colours for the rest of ASCII)
I also forget what those colour terminals were. The first Sun came along
when it turned out that it was cheaper to buy it and an Ada* compiler than
the Ada for the Honeywell.
* Computer Science /insisted/ they needed an Ada compiler.
They never used it - but the Sun was useful :-)
When the CS department finally moved away from their
own 6040 it was left
forgotten in a room over the summer - in the autumn the aircon was found to
have failed, overflowed and the machine was sitting there with water all
over the floor and in a steam bath. Still running fine.
Don't remember that - but certainly believable
Quite robust that ECL :)
Um, I don't think
the 6000s were ECL - think they were a reimplementation of
the 9000 using cheaper technology - probably whatever was the current
"state of the art" TTL (don't think CMOS had taken-over for speed yet)
Thanks, Abs, for reminding me of those times.
Andy
10:39 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
Yes. The 8 & 9 machines were ECL, the rest were TTL. IIRC, those were the
32/87, 9780, PN9600.
David mentioned disks on the PN (Unix) series. Those were formatted with
multiple of 512 byte sectors. The RTM/MPX machines used 768 byte sectors,
which was super optimal for the disks they happened to ship with their
earliest machines, but then a right PITA for everyone who used the machines
for decades beyond that. It was not just the strange size, but I think the
minimal disk allocation unit was something like 16K, and you only got 8 or
16 chances to add new segments to that. You better know how big your file
would grow before you started writing.
It's all slowly leaking back into my brain. The early machines, were number
32/xx and ran RTM, their Real Time Monitor. The xx was, IIRC, 27, 75, 77,
87. Very much process control oriented. A terminal *could* be hooked up to
an editor task that could edit code and submit jobs, but then it could not
detach and let you interact with another program. The company I worked for
hacked up a task swapping capability on top of it so we could actually get
work done. That was 1976 or so.
Around 1982?, they added an MMU and introduced MPX, the Mapped Programming
Executive. That was much more usable, but still with the problematic disk
layout. I think the numbering changed then to x7nn, where X was the overall
technology and nn was a size within that. I know there was an 8750, 8780,
9780, 6780, 2750, and 7750. Those were the MPX machines. The UTX (Unix)
machines replaced the 7 with a 0, giving David his PN9080 and PN6050.
For unrelated reasons, I have to clean my basement today. Who knows what I
will dig up.
On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 1:07 PM, ANDY HOLT <andy.holt at tesco.net> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Brownlee" <abs at
absd.org>
We had a PN9080 and PN6040 at City University as
the main systems in the
late 90's
Ah, yes, "The Magic Roundabout" - was three 6040s and one
9080. I still
possess the Gould nameplate from the 9000.
They were the last machines we had that we though of as mainframes (even
if many would call them minis - but I think the racks were wider than 19"
so they clearly weren't minis!)
There's some interest in the story of how this system came together:
we did have a Honeywell dual 66/60 which was supplemented by the 9000 as
a time-sharing system when we had had it 5 years.
After two more years we calculated that we could buy and maintain the
trio of 6000s for less than the maintenance cost for the three years
that the Honeywell was due to remain and gain a noiceable increase in
computing power (and a noticeable decrease in power consumption) by
doing so ? and actually managed to convince the bean counters of this.
(accessed via the usual mix of ADM3As, ADM5s,
some Sun3s and a
whole bunch of Whitechapel MG-1s, ans some colour terminals of which I
cannot recall the name, but I remember them having a setting where they
would auto colour characters based on their clas - alpha one colour,
numbers another, and two or three other colours for the rest of ASCII)
I also forget what those colour terminals were. The first Sun came along
when it turned out that it was cheaper to buy it and an Ada* compiler than
the Ada for the Honeywell.
* Computer Science /insisted/ they needed an Ada compiler.
They never used it - but the Sun was useful :-)
When the CS department finally moved away from
their own 6040 it was left
forgotten in a room over the summer - in the autumn the aircon was found
to
have failed, overflowed and the machine was
sitting there with water all
over the floor and in a steam bath. Still running fine.
Don't remember that - but certainly believable
Quite robust that ECL :)
Um, I don't
think the 6000s were ECL - think they were a reimplementation
of
the 9000 using cheaper technology - probably whatever was the current
"state of the art" TTL (don't think CMOS had taken-over for speed yet)
Thanks, Abs, for reminding me of those times.
Andy
10:17 a.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Aiuto
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2016 7:29 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
I used most of the SEL/Gould/Encore machines. The 32/77 was an original SEL design, from
before Gould bought them. It ran MPX-32, their real-time OS. TTL based. The 32/87 was ECL,
in a much bigger cabinet. They made slight hardware changes to the 32/77 and 32/75 and
released them as the PowerNode PN7000 and PN5000, which ran UTX-32, their Unix port. IIRC,
we took a few 77's and changed one board in the chassis to turn them into PowerNodes.
The instruction set was more RISC-y than CISC-y. The floating point was base 16 exponent
rather than base 2. Because of the way they did normalization, there were a lot of bit
patterns which were impossible results. I made a lot of use of those to represent special
values.
I'm glad it was saved.
Bob: I may have a lot of software for it, if I can find the tapes and they are still
readable. I even got hold of their secret C compiler port.
On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 8:43 AM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
I have been given an lot of SEL software and
documentation, along with
a simulator Now, I need to get off my butt and put it all on line.
Thank you for saving the system, Bob.
On 10/13/16 8:34 PM, Bob Rosenbloom wrote:
On 10/13/2016 9:01 AM, Rick Bensene wrote:
Well... with a momentary lapse of reason, I bought the Gould / SEL
system. It
won't go to scrap.
I'm
curious what the Systems 32/77 is..
Wasn't Gould SEL? maybe an SEL system?
The 32/77-series was a 32-bit machine implemented in ECL, based on
earlier SEL designs, but is definitely Gould in design/manufacture.
Some of the machines in the series had a very powerful (for the
time) floating point unit (known as the IPU) that operated in
tandem with the main CPU that vastly increased the number-crunching
power available
The machines were mainly intended for real-time control
applications (as used in the flight sim applications in the
auction)
The machine ran a real-time executive called MPX-32.
More information: http://www.encore-support.com/htmls/32_77.htm
Years ago, I had some experience with these machines. They were
quite powerful for their time, and were also workhorses that just ran and ran.
Very robust design.
These are neat machines, and I hope that they end up in the hands
of someone that can care for them rather than ending up scrap.
--
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
No idea how I'm going to get it, and what
I'm going to do with it,
but
after reading about it last night,
I thought it might be fun to play with. We'll
see...
Bob
25 Oct
25 Oct
2:12 p.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
There are some new scans up now for 32/75 on bitsavers.org/pdf/sel and some software
under bits/SEL
I'll be working on MPX documentation next
On 10/14/16 7:29 PM, Tony Aiuto wrote:
Bob: I may have a lot of software for it, if I can
find the tapes and they
are still readable. I even got hold of their secret C compiler port.
3 Nov
3 Nov
6:14 p.m.
New subject: Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)
Bob: I have not found any Gould software yet but last night I found a
packet of all the UTX-32 documentation on microfiche. When you are ready
for it, let me know how to mail it to you.
On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 5:12 PM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
There are some new scans up now for 32/75 on
bitsavers.org/pdf/sel and
some software
under bits/SEL
I'll be working on MPX documentation next
On 10/14/16 7:29 PM, Tony Aiuto wrote:
Bob: I may have a lot of software for it, if I
can find the tapes and
they
are still readable. I even got hold of their
secret C compiler port.
2741
days inactive
2763
days old
20 comments
14 participants
participants (14)
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abs＠absd.org -
aek＠bitsavers.org -
andy.holt＠tesco.net -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
bobalan＠sbcglobal.net -
derschjo＠gmail.com -
elson＠pico-systems.com -
jplist2008＠kiwigeek.com -
kylevowen＠gmail.com -
linimon＠lonesome.com -
pbirkel＠gmail.com -
rickb＠bensene.com -
tony.aiuto＠gmail.com -
vintagecomputer＠bettercomputing.net