On Sun, 24 Jan 1999, Marvin wrote: That's the guy. He's also well regarded by Alto collectors: http://www.spies.com/aek/xerox.html So, don't worry, if you don't pay him $5K, it'll still have a good home. $5K seems like a reasonable price, BTW (assuming he doesn't have a $20K reserve). Only 1000 or so were made. It's historic. It would be easy to justify. Who's gonna do it?! Not me! I have absolutely no desire to spend $5K on the thing. And this confuses me a little. It's near the top of my wanted list, and I can afford it, but the prospect doesn't interest me even a little bit. For some reason, I find the idea somewhat offensive. I guess it's because I think of an acquisition sort of like an "adoption". I'm willing to house the thing, and spend a good chunk of time trying to get it working, keep it working, and make it accessible to others. Why should I have to pay $5K on top of that? $500 seems to be my limit for what I consider a reasonable acquisition fee. Maybe that will go up as this crazy price spiral continues, but to pay more than that, I think you really have to be in the speculative investment mindset, and I'm not. -- Doug

On Sun, 24 Jan 1999, Roger Merchberger wrote: Well, "afford" means it wouldn't send me into bankrupty -- it's not the amount of cash I keep in my wallet or anything. As far as adopting you, if you can cook, clean, and program, come on down! It would beat the hell out of *paying* you to do those things :-) -- Doug

I had the same feeling when I looked at the bid. (The Alto is also near the top of my list of Super-Cool Machines. It's much higher in Cool Use terms than an Apple I, or an Altair, or even a straight -8. It may not be higher in Cool Prestige terms than those machines, but that's OK.) One problem is that we on the list are spoiled. When we get an offer, it's usually in the form of, "Hey everybody, I have an XYZ for sale! It comes with this stuff and is in that condition, and I'm asking N dollars or so." But this guy is offering his machine as is, in unknown shape, probably with no docs or software, for EXACTLY $5000. (Or more, of course.) It just doesn't seem as inviting, and actually it seems a bit imperious. OK, most auctions are like that to some degree. But this one WAS extreme -- no description of the machine, no newsgroup message (at least not on the groups I read). Yeah, this thing would probably require some work to get and keep it runnfing. For starters, you'd have to find disk packs, put software on them, and possibly set up a boot server for 3MB/s Ethernet. The other reason the Altair is so high on my list is that I don't know of an emulator. Anyone? -- Derek

Well, generally I'm an idealist but on some topics I'm quite pragmatic. Since I have limited space and time, there's no point in collecting a machine unless I can/will do something with it. And the Alto is definitely interesting! It has some famous programs (the Smalltalk and Mesa languages, the Bravo editor/word processor, a nice little core OS, even a few games although I think they tax the machine's resources unfortunately). The hardware design is interesting but generally comprehensible. And you're allowed to write your own microcode. :) And, of course, in a parallel universe it might have started the GUI move- ment five years early if Xerox had actually sold it, instead of using it (the Alto, and PARC in general) to damage itself (Xerox) so severly. I was going to mention this before but couldn't find a place to fit it. It's important not to confuse the Super-Cool Machines on my list with super- cooled machines! :) I don't think I can reasonably support my own Cray. Is the seller a known collector, or an unknown collector from a known domain (spies.com)? Aargh, I didn't realize that. My visions of singlehandedly maintaining an Altair are fading away. I thought it was also a problem to keep the CRTs on any Xerox machine in good shape. Maybe. They're 2.5 MB when formatted. There are some Alto manuals on the Web (I don't seem to have the URL) which would give you a better idea. Alto, of course. That was a silly mistake! Well, the machine is obviously very rare. It's a pain to keep running. The same may be true of the Star (probably to a lesser degree). I'm not going to get one any time soon. I'd love to sit down and USE one for a few hours (to see Smalltalk, generally get the feel of the physical hardware, play with the 5-key keyset, and see how fast the machine runs -- including the games!) but even THAT's not likely to happen. So that leaves an emulator. But you're right. The emulator wouldn't just have to emulate a specific CPU, it would have to emulate the microcode. At the least, you would have to have 2-3 special-case emulators for 2-3 different instruction sets. (Perhaps they would magically recognize the current microcode image and use the appropriate instruction set.) And there's the disk hardware and the video hardware to deal with as well.

I like good documentation. Clearly, even if the original documentation was abysmal, information is now pretty readily available. (I think you made that point in one of your other posts.) I know the Alto drive is a Diablo drive. Some Altos came with an option of one removable and one fixed pack. Both packs have the same capacity. The access time is much lower than the removable-only machines. (That could be average access time -- meaning that the removable packs are the same on both kinds of machines. I'm just quoting from a little table in the manual.) Some also came with an external removable-pack drive. (The scale is some- thing I'm not used to. I think of a device I can hold in my hand being added to a machine that fits on my desk. Here we have a device bigger than many modern computers being added to a machine that could BE my desk, if the monitor were taken off the top.) If you look at the Alto manual, you can see Diablo's model numbers. Possibly an option. The I/O was very flexible but I suspect (drumroll) you had to write your own microcode for it. :) And create a custom cable and header. But it could actually have been standard. The keyset is exactly as Doug Engelbart designed it: 5 bars next to each other, a bit like piano keys. It doesn't replace the regular keyboard; it's just an alternate way of entering small bits of data while you use the mouse with your other hand. -- Derek

Weren't there documents that explained everything, but were internal only? Of course that is a huge problem when companies go out of business. hmm. I've never seen that info except on the one site. You may just have to find a way to read those files. I wouldn't say they're complete (especially by your standards), but they're better than the information which I previously had, which is almost none. So they're worth reading. Why do I suspect the microassembler syntax was based on Pascal's? (I had written "microsyntax" but that's not really the same meaning.) Yes, you are correct. See my huge reply to Sam's small question ("Why not just create a microcode emulator?"). Maybe they assumed you wouldn't need that many boot files anyway. Probably several would suffice: the Exec (OS and shell), the Scavenger (disk repair), the NetExec (Exec with network file capabilities), the FTP program, a disk- creation and copying program. IIRC those were all available, and that's about all you need, I think. :) You still have 50-100 options to choose from (one per key). That's not as many as 256 (128? 65536?) but it's still a lot. I wish modern machines had useful and flexible boot-time options. The IBM RS/6000 does (but being IBM, everything is done with the function keys). Other workstations do. Home machines don't, but their device interfaces are so complicated that they should. The shortcuts on the Mac are a good start, but I'm talking about documented, powerful, consistent firmware, to the level of a mini-OS if necessary. -- Derek

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On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Tony Duell wrote: I have the Diagnostic manual that lists all the 4-digit diagnostic codes and their meanings that I should probably make a copy of for you. No. The Daybreak uses a proprietary display. It is apparently very difficult to adapt, say, a VGA monitor to a Daybreak. However, I have no doubt ARD could do it. Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Always being hassled by the man. Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0 See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details! [Last web site update: 01/15/99]

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On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Sam Ismail wrote: What you should do is email webmaster(a)xerox.com and ask them what the code means. The WebMaster at Xerox is quite famous for answering all questions asked of him, I think he has even written a book about it. In the past I have asked questions about old xerox kit and have had them answered. -- Kevan Collector of old computers: http://www.heydon.org/kevan/collection/

[...] The seller is the same person that put the Alto manuals on the web. See the Xerox Alto Archive; there's a link on Al's Xerox Workstation Collection page: http://www.spies.com/aek/xerox.html People seem to be quick to complain about Al's auction, but where else do you see an Alto available in any condition at any price?

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OK. I now feel more trustworthy about the seller. Just because the seller is making an Alto available does NOT mean that I can't comaplain about the auction. A transaction like this is just not the way I would like to do business. (Other people seem to agree with me -- are there still no bids?) Didn't a similar offer happen a year or two ago, with no takers? Yes, I want an Alto. (At least I think I do -- of course I could be wrong.) I even have fantasies about paying the $5000 (which I could do, if it came to that). Yes, the machine is rare. There never were that many chances to get them and there will be fewer and fewer and eventually none. But at a gut level, I still feel uneasy (yes, and stingy, and tempted to try to hunt for a bargin) about buying a machine in _unknown_ condition with possibly _no_ software/media/manuals for a _non-negotiable_ price! Well, the price is negotiable, but only upward. :) I'd be interested to hear what you think, Eric, since we've talked about Smalltalk before and you're evidently a fan of Xerox' workstations. I'd also be interested in any details you have on actually using the various Xerox machines (i.e., how fast are they? how easy is it to unerstand and expand them?) but that's probably better by private e-mail. -- Derek

At 02:42 PM 1/26/99 +1100, Andrew Davie wrote: He's mentioned in the "An Open Letter to Hobbyists", dated 2/3/76: | Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to | expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the | initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of | the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. I also found references to him as an co-author of "format_pl1", a PL/I formatting program, and also worked on PL/I itself and Multics' "transaction processing" features. He was apparently a fellow Harvard student with Gates and Allen. Monte N. Davidoff is one of the "Multicians," a programmer responsible for some part of the MULTICS operating system. He may be reachable at &lt;mnd(a)multicians.org&gt;rg>. Other info is at <http://www.multicians.org/>. I saw another reference that said he's mentioned briefly in the book "Programmers at work" by Microsoft Press, in Gates' explanation along side a reproduction of the first page of the source list of Altair BASIC, with the quote "Paul Allen and I wrote this, Monte Davidoff wrote all math stuff." An excerpt is below. He's also mentioned on page 77 and 78 of "Hard Drive", said another reference. All this was gathered by a few minutes searching with www.dejanews.com and www.hotbot.com, with the string "Monte Davidoff". I know, it's far easier to enter a message that says "I wonder what happened to him," and wait for the oracles to whisper the answer. :-) - John

I wrote: Tony replied: The condition is as-is. What part of that is suspicious? When you buy stuff at a surplus store, how often do you get it under terms other than as-is? The reason it is as-is is not because there is anything known to be wrong with it, but simply because there is no easy way to tell whether is functioning perfectly. Al probably knows more about Altos than anyone other than the actual Xerox engineers that developed it. He's not trying to make a killing selling off stuff known to be broken junk, if that's what your worried about. And if it weren't for Al, there wouldn't be 1/20 of as much information about the Alto on the web. I'll repeat what I said before, because it evidently didn't sink in: Someone else brought up the Xerox 6085 (Daybreak). Compared to the Alto, these are so common as to be almost ubiquitous. You can hardly walk around without tripping over them. Alright, so I exaggerate a bit. But they used to be in Weird Stuff all the time. Xerox sold tens of thousands of them. How many Altos did the sell? AFAIK, rounded to the nearest unit, exactly zero. I'm not trying to convince people that they should buy Al's Alto. Heck, I really want one but I don't have $5000 to spend. I just think Al's been getting a bum rap in Classiccmp for no good reason. IMHO it is not appropriate for people who aren't interested in buying the machine (due to price, or as-is condition, or any other reason) to take a sour-grapes view and try to convince everyone that there must be something wrong with it. Thought experiment: If you had an Alto II, and decided that you were willing to part with it, how much money would you ask for it? Bear in mind that it was the world's first mass-produced personal workstation, and that it was NEVER offered for sale.

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I'm trying to compare the Alto to the Apple ][ (which is what I'm most familiar with) and they may be about the same order of magnitude. (If you think about it, it's pretty incredible if it's true, since this little machine ran such revolutionary programs! That's not to say it ran them _quickly_ -- the manuals gloss over that sort of thing. That's why I'm waiting to hear from someone who can describe the actual speed of the Alto.) The microcycle time is 170 ns. That works out to a clock cycle time (for the microcode) of just under 6 MHz. Suppose there are 5-10 micro- instructions per machine-language instruction. Then the figure of 1-2 usec per instruction (which is on Al's site -- see below) makes good sense. But it doesn't make much sense to do these kinds of rough calculations. The main reason is that as far as emulation goes, microcode is a totally different animal than machine code. Things happen in parallel; although the parts of the CPU are doing simple things (like simple arithmetic) they are working together. You would have to duplicate them precisely and make a single processor act as if it could do things in parallel. As Tony pointed out, that may even involve accounting for certain individual logic gates. The gate-level emulation by itself would be doable; the parallel-processing emulation would be doable; both together would be much less doable. There are two other snags. The first is that the Alto was designed with a motley assortment of hardware, all of which would need to be emulated -- the hard drive, the bitmapped display, the keyboard and mouse (and maybe the 5-key keyset), and the Ethernet. The hardware is exotic enough that it could be hard to coax a modern PC to duplicate it exactly. (For example, the Ethernet is from a previous generation, 3MB/sec.) (Honestly, the pun "coax"="convince" vs. "coax"="coaxial" was NOT intended!) The second snag is that the microcode drives the hardware. There are some fancy capabilities that user programs depend on. For example, the display hardware will take a series of blocks and put them on the display. The blocks may be inverted. They may have left margins (which involves shifting blocks to the right on the display). They may have right margins. This does NOT involve shifting each block to the left! It involves giving the block a certain size (a 1-dimensional range of memory addresses, from low to high) and changing the number of memory words per display line. Therefore, you're changing the size of a 2-dimensional array which is represented as a continuous (1-dimensional) string of words. The relationship between the offset of a word (its location in the 1-dimensional memory) and the placement of its bits (their location on the 2-dimensional screen) could get rather intricate. And the microcode has to manage all of the display capabilities, as well as managing the disk and keyboard and Ethernet, all with precise timings. I think the microcode actually has a task-switching executive in it. I wouldn't say an emulator is impossible. Atari and Commodore emulators emulate display hardware that's more advanced than the Alto's. But they can emulate the hardware directly. An Alto emulator would have to preserve the intimate and delicate relationship between the Alto's microcode and its hardware. The timing involved might be slow enough that a modern PC could handle it. But it (the timing) is detailed enough that I wouldn't want to write an Alto emulator without a LOT of spare time and documentation. Of course, I have neither of those things. :) The other alternative is not emulating the microcode, just the instructions that sit on top of them. (I guess that'd be an implicit answer to your question.) Unfortunately those instructions can _change at run-time_. Take loading Smalltalk as an example. First you have to boot off the Ethernet or disk, which is purely microcode. (As an aside, a parallel thread is about the keyboard combinations used to select which program you want sent over the Ethernet to your workstation. The combinations are very arbitrary. That's because the bits from the keyboard scanning get plopped right into the appropriate field of the Ethernet boot packet. It's ugly because it's so low-level. Obviously there weren't any microinstructions to spare to make the interface prettier.) Then I think you use the base instruction set (a clone of the NOVA, made for BCPL) to run the OS and executive. That loads Smalltalk. I suspect that Smalltalk uses its OWN microcode! (There's a big chunk (not in the base instruction set?) that does fancy BitBlt instructions. Think VGA cards. Of course since this is Xerox, not IBM, the capability is done _right_, but I digress.) I don't know if the details are right, but you can imagine the overhead that would be involved in writing such an emulator. At the very least, you'd have to emulate certain "canned" instruction sets (BCPL, Smalltalk) and some boot microcode. That might prevent you from playing the games, which may use their own microcode. On another subject, this Apple Lisa web page: http://galena.tjs.org/lisa/People/ points to Al's page (Eric said he's the person who's selling the Alto on eBay which started this whole discussion): http://www.spies.com/aek/xerox.html and implies that an emulator is in progress. But only Eric, or Al, or someone who has experience with an Alto (and who wants to come forward) can say for sure. <ferris-bueller> Anyone? Anyone? </ferris-bueller> I would rank Tony's opinion next in terms of credibility. Tony, do my rough not-based-on-experienced calculations seem plausible? Do the prospects of a PERQ emulator sound similar to my description? So there you have it, Sam. This is why computer science is such a fascinating and frustrating subject. Add bad marketing, entropy, and general greed and selfishness and things become REALLY interesting. :) -- Derek

Perhaps. I'm looking forward to whatever Tony has to say. You already gave me that incentive about three times, and both of those ideas were FAR easier. Well, building a replica of Zuse's Z-3 may not be easier. But my Apple ][ programming ideas are easier, and bringing my Marchant is MUCH easier. So why should I bother doing the difficult stuff, if the reward is the same? :) -- Derek

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On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Sam Ismail wrote: Hell, Sam, do a hard one. The main job is a piece of cake and I think Tony can do the extra-credit bit with _both_ hands tied behind his back. -- Ward Griffiths "the timid die just like the daring; and if you don't take the plunge then you'll just take the fall" Michael Longcor

A Z3 replik ? Only functional (al relays, but modern part) or an exact copy ? As for the functional replica it's just some work and an awfull lot of money for the parts (my guess, some 8000 USD), but easyer than most _exact_ emulations of complex machines, since the Z3 is _well_ documented and describen - and thanks to Raul Rojas and his students, these documents are easy to get now - and modern parts are a _bit_ more reliable. Gruss H. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

Depends on the parts you gan get for low/free. But forget about the dream of using old telephone parts, especialy relays - this time is gone for mor than 20 years - there are no more old scraped exchanges to get 600 relays (and even if, they would be most likely EWS type machines, their relais aren't just single orphans, but rather high integratet mechanical structures, where it is almost impossible to extract a single relay). You have to buy new ones (or beeing lucky to find enough high quality pcs. at a surplus store). And you cant go for the 4 Mark types with one switch, since the Z3 uses often more than one. Also it's a must to use socketed types, for easy exchange (that would also simplyfy the design) - an exception to this might be if you want to build it as small as possible - but the relays needed in this case might cost even more. At a number of some 600 relays and sockets I assume an average price of an relay at DM 10 plus DM 4 per socket. That gives 14 Mark (or USD 8) per installed relay - assume you use an Euro card style (within a 19" rack) you might end up with 4 or maybe 6 relays per card (4 if you use 90 degree socket to reduce card height - or if you want to use a low density to keep it easy to wire - or 6 if you go for the maximum - a 4 relay per card design will result in about half the heigh per card as a 6 relay per card design, so the whole computer will be 25% smaler). This means you need some 150 PCB boards at, lets say 10 Mark each - with an aprobiate connector for 10 Mark each. To mopunt them, another connector is needed in the rack at 14 Mark each, eding up with 34 Mark per board (or 90 Mark including the relays). Now we have 13500 Mark (or ~8000 USD) and thats only the PCBs, relays, sockets and connectors - I assume the rack(s), card mountng, power supply(s) and small parts (like diodes, resistors and wireing) are just for free. Of course you can go and collect relays wherever you find them and end up with hundreds of different types and dozends of needed voltage levels etc. not to mention that this beast will need _a lot_ more room (usinge the design describen above we need at _least_ one full height rack, but maybe two) and dont forget the problem of different kinds of mounting for the relays. Gruss H. Step aside, and wait for a real stunning idea, soon to arive (no comment). -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

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