10 Oct
2005
10 Oct
'05
1:31 p.m.
There's a listing on eBay for ASCII art TTY
printouts
(#8707360741) and it raised an interesting question. I
remember as a kid going to my father's office (he worked for
New York Telephone in New York City) at Christmas and they
had various computer systems that they let the kids play on.
One of them (I don't remember which) had a program to print calendars.
In the eBay listing, there's a Snoopy Red Barron calendar,
which I distinctly remember printing out.
I remember these! I made a printout too.
I also remember taking typing classes in high school (1977) and the
teacher had training books that would create a text picture if you
followed the directions correctly. I wish I had them as I'd like to do
some ASCII art.
10 Oct
10 Oct
3:13 p.m.
You can grab a Tar file with a bunch of these pictures, including
the nudes, at http://realmsmud.org/~james/ascii.tar
I had them on my university site years ago, but they made me take em
down because of the nudes.
Lawrence LeMay
3:25 p.m.
New subject: Single Board Computers
A while back I mentioned a couple of strange systems that had turned up in
surplus here at UT Arlington, Rockwell 8315s. No luck on Google and no
comments from the list, so I opened one up. It turned out to be an AIM 65/40
system. Pictures and brief notes here:
http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/WhatsNew.asp
I also have donated a single board computer from Western Data Systems called
"The Data Handler". I bought it new back in the late '70s when I lived in
Cupertino. I think their office was over in Santa Clara. There are pictures
of it on this same page.
Gil
11:29 a.m.
New subject: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers
Speaking of SBCs. Does anyone know anything about an Intel 80C186/80C188
Evaluation Board? It's NOT Multibus.
Joe
At 02:25 PM 10/10/05 -0500, you wrote:
A while back I mentioned a couple of strange systems
that had turned up in
surplus here at UT Arlington, Rockwell 8315s. No luck on Google and no
comments from the list, so I opened one up. It turned out to be an AIM 65/40
system. Pictures and brief notes here:
http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/WhatsNew.asp
I also have donated a single board computer from Western Data Systems called
"The Data Handler". I bought it new back in the late '70s when I lived in
Cupertino. I think their office was over in Santa Clara. There are pictures
of it on this same page.
Gil
5 p.m.
New subject: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers
Joe R. wrote:
Speaking of SBCs. Does anyone know anything about an
Intel 80C186/80C188
Evaluation Board? It's NOT Multibus.
Joe
At 02:25 PM 10/10/05 -0500, you wrote:
>A while back
>
intel still produces sample boards for all processors to send out. If
you get one of
the older eval boards, it probably has some support for expansion, but
more importantly,
it would have connections (or should have) to bring out run control and
processor bus to
be hooked to trace devices. This can require an interposer for a lot of
systems, and
is nice if you want to play with a processor and see what it does w/o
having to do such
a thing.
A lot of these used to be on the intel site, but are no longer there.
jim
10:23 p.m.
New subject: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers
On 10/10/2005 at 3:29 PM Joe R. wrote:
Speaking of SBCs. Does anyone know anything about an
Intel 80C186/80C188
Evaluation Board?
Can't help with the evaluation board, but the mention of the 80186 reminds me of a
system I worked on (Durango Poppy) using one (an added 80286 was an option if you wanted
to run Unix).
It's a great chip for its time with DMA done the right way and lots of I/O pins.
Unfortunately, any programs that play with PC hardware are doomed to failure.
I've got a little FAX receiver box that was designed to fit between a printer and a PC
and would either print FAXen as received or store them on a DOS-formatted 1.44MB floppy
drive that was part of the unit. It uses an 80C188 and I recall looking at the 27C256
BIOS and noting that it implemented many of the PC BIOS calls, particularly those for
diskette I/O. It has 256K of RAM. The thing isn't much bigger than a floppy drive
and is powered by a wall wart. It'd make a neat little CP/M-86 system if I ever got
around to programming it.
But this brings up a question--how many early non-PC PC's are there wandering around?
IOW, things that have the ability to run a full operating system, but aren't PC's
per se. My DSL model is certainly one--runs Linux (just telnet to it and you get a
login).
Cheers,
Chuck
11 Oct
11 Oct
2:47 a.m.
New subject: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers
Chuck Guzis wrote:
But this brings up a question--how many early non-PC
PC's are there wandering around? IOW, things that have the ability to run a full
operating system, but aren't PC's per se. My DSL model is certainly one--runs
Linux (just telnet to it and you get a login).
I'm not sure if that counts, though. It may well not be running Linux
on anything that you would recognise as PC hardware. It might not have
a BIOS as such, even.
Gordon.
12:02 p.m.
New subject: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers
On 10/11/2005 at 6:47 AM Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
I'm not sure if that counts, though. It may well
not be running Linux
on anything that you would recognise as PC hardware. It might not have
a BIOS as such, even.
I meant "PC" in a much broader sense than in the "IBM PC" sense. What
I was wondering about was how many "appliances" had sufficient I/O capabilities
that they could be configured to run a generic operating system. This would mean at a
minimum, some way to do console I/O and some sort of disk storage, as well as being able
to support an OS to start with. So my DSL modem would seem to fulfill these requirements,
as disk is simulated by flash memory--I suppose an external PC could even serve as a USB
disk drive. My little FAX box has suffiicent I/O and memory as well as an internal
diskette drive to meet the test.
A USR Courier modem, with its 80C188, might, but there's not much RAM and no way to
connect an external peripheral, so it fails the test, even though you could probably
reprogram the PROM and get it to give you a command prompt via the RS-232 port.
How about a TIVO or an MP3 player? Certainly most video game boxes have the necessary
resources (I seem to recall a web site dedicated to getting early Xboxes running Linux--it
wasn't as simply as you'd think).
Cheers,
Chuck
9:18 p.m.
New subject: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers
I understand that Linksys routers run Linux and they have no disk drive and
no console, so I think your definition is not very useful.
An OS does not require secondary storage. The Palm OS prior to release 5
assumed there was no secondary storage. Every program is always in the real
memory space. The Knoppix distro of Linux is quite happy running on a RAM
disk. I have a laptop that I boot Knoppix on that has a broken hard drive.
It runs just fine. While it boots from the CD-ROM, it uncompresses
everything you run to a RAM drive and runs it from there. It will also boot
from a USB drive.
The closest that the router has to a console is that it supports HTTP on
port 80 so you configure it with a browser. A nice GUI. The router does not
require a console. For that matter, many servers run "headless".
Gil
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 11:02 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single
Board Computers
On 10/11/2005 at 6:47 AM Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
I'm not sure if that counts, though. It may
well not be
running Linux
on anything that you would recognise as PC
hardware. It
might not have
a BIOS as such, even.
I meant "PC" in a much broader sense than in the "IBM PC"
sense. What I was wondering about was how many "appliances"
had sufficient I/O capabilities that they could be configured
to run a generic operating system. This would mean at a
minimum, some way to do console I/O and some sort of disk
storage, as well as being able to support an OS to start
with. So my DSL modem would seem to fulfill these
requirements, as disk is simulated by flash memory--I suppose
an external PC could even serve as a USB disk drive. My
little FAX box has suffiicent I/O and memory as well as an
internal diskette drive to meet the test.
A USR Courier modem, with its 80C188, might, but there's not
much RAM and no way to connect an external peripheral, so it
fails the test, even though you could probably reprogram the
PROM and get it to give you a command prompt via the RS-232 port.
How about a TIVO or an MP3 player? Certainly most video game
boxes have the necessary resources (I seem to recall a web
site dedicated to getting early Xboxes running Linux--it
wasn't as simply as you'd think).
Cheers,
Chuck
9:23 p.m.
New subject: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers
Gil Carrick wrote:
I understand that Linksys routers run Linux and they
have no disk drive and
no console, so I think your definition is not very useful.
It uses flash as secondary storage. Also, it is easy, almost trivial,
to add a console.
Peace... Sridhar
9:34 p.m.
New subject: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers
...
Sure, but my point was that it normally runs without one so that saying a
device requires secondary storage and a console to be considered as
containing an OS is not a definition that is very useful.
Gil
I understand
that Linksys routers run Linux and they have no disk
drive and no console, so I think your definition is not very useful.
It uses flash as secondary storage. Also, it is easy, almost
trivial, to add a console.
Peace... Sridhar
12 Oct
12 Oct
12:20 a.m.
New subject: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers
On 10/11/2005 at 8:34 PM Gil Carrick wrote:
Sure, but my point was that it normally runs without
one so that saying a
device requires secondary storage and a console to be considered as
containing an OS is not a definition that is very useful.
I don't believe that's what I was saying. My definition of a "non-PC"
PC stipulated that the device have sufficient I/O for some sort of secondary storage and
the ability to drive a console, in addition to being able to host a more-or-less commodity
OS.
Thus, my microwave oven fails in that there's no way to add a console and no secondary
storage. And I doubt that there's a commodity OS that would run on it. Same goes for
my trackball--it's got a Microchip PIC in it, but there's just not enough of the
other stuff there.
So the Linksys router would satisfy the requirement--it can run a commodity OS (LInux),
has secondary storage (Flash) and has sufficient I/O to drive a console (through the
RJ-45) . I suspect that you can just telnet to 192.168.0.1 (or some other IP address) and
get a login prompt.
I could run CP/M 86 (or even MS-DOS) on my little FAX box--it's got the I/O and
secondary storage.
Maybe we should stipulate that the secondary storage is nonvolatile...
Cheers,
Chuck
9:05 a.m.
New subject: Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers
On 10/12/05, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 10/11/2005 at 8:34 PM Gil Carrick wrote:
Then my MSCP SCSI controller is a non-PC PC. It has UART to connect to
a terminal. It has SCSI storage. It has ROM and RAM. It is lacking an
OS but I believe FreeDOS can be ported.
vax, 9000
Sure, but my point was that it normally runs
without one so that saying a
device requires secondary storage and a console to be considered as
containing an OS is not a definition that is very useful.
I don't believe that's what I was saying. My definition of a "non-PC"
PC stipulated that the device have sufficient I/O for some sort of secondary storage and
the ability to drive a console, in addition to being able to host a more-or-less commodity
OS.
6864
days inactive
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12 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
cclist＠sydex.com -
gilcarrick＠comcast.net -
gordonjcp＠gjcp.net -
James＠jdfogg.com -
jwstephens＠msm.umr.edu -
lemay＠cs.umn.edu -
ploopster＠gmail.com -
rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com -
vax9000＠gmail.com