20 Apr
2016
20 Apr
'16
11:33 p.m.
Back when I spent a couple of years at UNLV in the late 80s, I had a class in which I was
forced to use an account on a Harris H800 computer, if my memory serves me correctly.
Being a BSD snob, I felt that was a terrible imposition, much like being forced to
calculate compound interest on a stone-age abacus made from partially petrified dinosaur
turds. *Without gloves.*
Now, of course, I'm a lot more easy-going, and downright curious about things that
might not have been my first choice for a computing environment. Even VMS!
So, does anybody here know anything about that family of computers? I seem to recall
getting a tour of the computer room once, and the two front panels of the machine were
swung open to reveal two thick, mattress-like beds of twisted pair wires. That seemed
nauseatingly primitive to me at the time, but now the memory seems fascinating.
I also seem to remember an operator's console with two round CRTs on it, but I might
have fabricated that memory from whole cloth.
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
20 Apr
20 Apr
11:39 p.m.
On Wed, Apr 20, 2016, Mark J. Blair wrote:
Back when I spent a couple of years at UNLV in the
late 80s, I had a
class in which I was forced to use an account on a Harris H800
computer, if my memory serves me correctly. Being a BSD snob, I felt
that was a terrible imposition, much like being forced to calculate
compound interest on a stone-age abacus made from partially petrified
dinosaur turds. *Without gloves.*
Now, of course, I'm a lot more easy-going, and downright curious about
things that might not have been my first choice for a computing
environment. Even VMS!
So, does anybody here know anything about that family of computers?
I don't, but I recall seeing an ad on local craigslist for "4 full sets
of working circuit boards for the Harris 800 super-mini computer,
including CPU." The price was $1; not sure if that meant it was
literally almost free, or if they wanted to haggle.
Needless to say I didn't go for it, because I hadn't quite drunk the
classiccmp Kool-Aid (you know the kind; the kind that makes you need to
collect anything that sounds old) yet and knew I would get no use out of
plain circuit boards without a computer for them to go in... but now I'm
kicking myself.
Also, my dad used to have use of a Harris mini of some kind, running
Vulcan OS, where he worked. He and that place of business are long gone,
so I'll probably never know what the exact setup was, but I'd like to.
I
seem to recall getting a tour of the computer room once, and the two
front panels of the machine were swung open to reveal two thick,
mattress-like beds of twisted pair wires. That seemed nauseatingly
primitive to me at the time, but now the memory seems fascinating.
I also seem to remember an operator's console with two round CRTs on
it, but I might have fabricated that memory from whole cloth.
--
Eric Christopherson
21 Apr
21 Apr
12:21 a.m.
I seem to have acquired a few boards from a decommissioned system. Don't
know what I'll do with these for now, other than maybe hang them up for
display purposes...unless someone has one, what else can one do?
http://imgur.com/a/NAThh
This is the only picture I have of this particular installation:
http://i.imgur.com/ePQCz5u.jpg
I'm sure it was decommissioned sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s,
at least according to some of the 9-track tapes I have for it. My plan, if
I make it out to VCF West, is to bring the software along for Al K.
Kyle
2:07 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 6:46 AM, Mark Linimon <linimon at lonesome.com> wrote:
On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 11:21:03PM -0500, Kyle Owen
wrote:
I was a bit surprised to see that it used 2901 with a date code of 1985 -
the 2901 was introduced 10 years before.
In the late 1970s, Norsk Data implemented the ND10 architecture with the
2901. It was thought that this would give a modest uplift over the previous
generation, and the planned name was ND10S. It turned out to be so fast
that Norsk Data gave it the name ND100 instead :-)
I seem to have acquired a few boards from a
decommissioned system.
74S00s, they were going for speed.
The 2900s are the well-known bit-slice chips.
All definitely the level of technology I cut my teeth on.
2:24 a.m.
On 21 April 2016 at 08:07, Raymond Wiker <rwiker at gmail.com> wrote:
I was a bit surprised to see that it used 2901 with a
date code of 1985 -
the 2901 was introduced 10 years before.
In the late 1970s, Norsk Data implemented the ND10 architecture with the
2901. It was thought that this would give a modest uplift over the previous
generation, and the planned name was ND10S. It turned out to be so fast
that Norsk Data gave it the name ND100 instead :-)
Almost :-)
The NORD-10/S was a NORD-10 plus caching and paging, while the
bitsliced version was to be called NORD-10/M (M for 'micro'), and was
so fast that it was renamed NORD-100, which was shortened to ND-100
later that same year (1978 - but the machine itself was released in
1979, so it was always sold as just ND-100).
-Tor
6:40 a.m.
Almost :-)
The NORD-10/S was a NORD-10 plus caching and paging, while the
bitsliced version was to be called NORD-10/M (M for 'micro'), and was
so fast that it was renamed NORD-100, which was shortened to ND-100
later that same year (1978 - but the machine itself was released in
1979, so it was always sold as just ND-100).
-Tor
Speaking of NORD-10 I put some scanned documents here:
http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-documentation
and also a few diskettes that I have imaged:
http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-floppy-disks
One of the documents describes the microarchitecture of the NORD-10/S.
There are some eighty more disks that are imaged but not yet put on the
webpage above and also quite a lot of documentation, both software and
hardware for the NORD-10, that I need to deal with when I have time.
/Mattis
7:22 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:40 PM, Mattis Lind <mattislind at gmail.com> wrote:
Speaking of NORD-10 I put some scanned documents here:
http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-documentation
and also a few diskettes that I have imaged:
http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-floppy-disks
One of the documents describes the microarchitecture of the NORD-10/S.
There are some eighty more disks that are imaged but not yet put on the
webpage above and also quite a lot of documentation, both software and
hardware for the NORD-10, that I need to deal with when I have time.
Hey, this is useful.
Thanks for doing it!
--
mvh
Torfinn Ingolfsen
8:19 a.m.
On 21 April 2016 at 13:22, Torfinn Ingolfsen <tingox at gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:40 PM, Mattis Lind
<mattislind at gmail.com> wrote:
Yep!
Already investigating. IMD gave me some trouble, had to resort to
dosbox. Source for PED (Programmer's Editor) version G? I've never
seen source. I have version F as a :PROG file. I'm guessing that Planc
version C may compile it.. this will stretch my emulator. Haven't yet
figured out how to handle that PED2.DMK file, so I don't know what it
contains - executable?
Anyway, this should really fork into another thread, not hijacking the
Harris H800 thread.
Speaking of NORD-10 I put some scanned documents here:
http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-documentation
and also a few diskettes that I have imaged:
http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-floppy-disks
One of the documents describes the microarchitecture of the NORD-10/S.
There are some eighty more disks that are imaged but not yet put on the
webpage above and also quite a lot of documentation, both software and
hardware for the NORD-10, that I need to deal with when I have time.
Hey, this is useful.
Thanks for doing it! 
2:38 p.m.
On 4/20/16 11:07 PM, Raymond Wiker wrote:
I was a bit surprised to see that it used 2901 with a
date code of 1985 -
the 2901 was introduced 10 years before.
I designed a microcoded 12-bit graphics processor in 1985 using them. They
were the thing to use until CMOS bit-slices came out (actually, there was a 29C01)
2:36 p.m.
On 4/20/16 9:21 PM, Kyle Owen wrote:
I seem to have acquired a few boards from a
decommissioned system. Don't
know what I'll do with these for now, other than maybe hang them up for
display purposes...unless someone has one, what else can one do?
I have two front panels for a similar system.
It is a 24-bit mini. Docs are on bitsavers. Started out as a company called
Datacraft before Harris bought them.
3:38 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
I have two front panels for a similar system.
Think you could take some pictures? The lone picture I have of the H800
isn't a close-up of the panel, and I'd very much like to see what it looks
like up close.
It is a 24-bit mini. Docs are on bitsavers. Started out as a company called
Datacraft before Harris bought them.
Huh, sure enough. Many of its registers are 24-bit, but the memory is
48-bits wide. A "super-minicomputer", they claimed.
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/harris/0830007-000_Series_800_Refere…
I'd be happy to dump the microcode/PROMs when I get some time, perhaps over
the summer.
Kyle
12:46 a.m.
While I?d used several computers before the Harris H550 (I think that?s the right model,
we called it ?SNAP II? in the Navy), the Harris was the first that I worked on
professionally. Even though I was an Electrician at the time, I ended up as one of the
people working on the Harris, and somewhere I should still have a printout of the ?man
pages? on its JCL. It was running Vulcan OS, and I was able to get access to BASIC on it,
and IIRC, that?s how I got access to the JCL interface. I was also the only person
onboard ship, and about the only person in the Navy apparently to use the 8? floppies, I
used them to store Engineering documents written with the MUSE word processor (which at
the time I thought was quite nice). The system had quite a nice implementation of ZORK,
and what I remember being a very cool Star Trek game, that wasn?t like the traditional
Star Trek (which IIRC, it also had).
On the H550, the operators console was basically a normal terminal, with a printer. We
had a 9-track tape drive, paper-tape reader/punch, 2 or 3 pairs of 8? floppies around the
ship, four 8? HD?s, which IIRC were 80MB each (but realistically likely smaller, we were
really crunched for disk space). There was also a punch card reader in the one office,
but it could only read a single card at a time. One interesting thing was, to copy one
small file required typing a command string the length of a line on the terminal, it was a
nightmare to use the floppies as a result.
All in all, I have good memories of working on the system, probably better than working on
a Honeywell DPS-8 (or DPS-6) Mainframe running either GCOS-8 or GCOS-6.
BTW, VMS is pretty much my favorite OS, though sadly I?m not actively using it any more.
:-(
Zane
On Apr 20, 2016, at 8:33 PM, Mark J. Blair <nf6x at
nf6x.net> wrote:
Back when I spent a couple of years at UNLV in the late 80s, I had a class in which I was
forced to use an account on a Harris H800 computer, if my memory serves me correctly.
Being a BSD snob, I felt that was a terrible imposition, much like being forced to
calculate compound interest on a stone-age abacus made from partially petrified dinosaur
turds. *Without gloves.*
Now, of course, I'm a lot more easy-going, and downright curious about things that
might not have been my first choice for a computing environment. Even VMS!
So, does anybody here know anything about that family of computers? I seem to recall
getting a tour of the computer room once, and the two front panels of the machine were
swung open to reveal two thick, mattress-like beds of twisted pair wires. That seemed
nauseatingly primitive to me at the time, but now the memory seems fascinating.
I also seem to remember an operator's console with two round CRTs on it, but I might
have fabricated that memory from whole cloth.
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
10:27 a.m.
On Apr 20, 2016, at 11:33 PM, Mark J. Blair <nf6x
at nf6x.net> wrote:
Back when I spent a couple of years at UNLV in the late 80s, I had a class in which I was
forced to use an account on a Harris H800 computer, if my memory serves me correctly.
Being a BSD snob, I felt that was a terrible imposition, much like being forced to
calculate compound interest on a stone-age abacus made from partially petrified dinosaur
turds. *Without gloves.*
Now, of course, I'm a lot more easy-going, and downright curious about things that
might not have been my first choice for a computing environment. Even VMS!
So, does anybody here know anything about that family of computers? I seem to recall
getting a tour of the computer room once, and the two front panels of the machine were
swung open to reveal two thick, mattress-like beds of twisted pair wires. That seemed
nauseatingly primitive to me at the time, but now the memory seems fascinating.
I also seem to remember an operator's console with two round CRTs on it, but I might
have fabricated that memory from whole cloth.
Thick mat of twisted pair wiring, and console with two round CRTs, that's a good
description of a CDC 6000 series mainframe. They certainly weren't as easy to use as
Unix machines, but a lot faster than anything else at the time they were released.
paul
11:29 a.m.
On Apr 21, 2016, at 07:27, Paul Koning <paulkoning
at comcast.net> wrote:
Thick mat of twisted pair wiring, and console with two round CRTs, that's a good
description of a CDC 6000 series mainframe. They certainly weren't as easy to use as
Unix machines, but a lot faster than anything else at the time they were released.
Ah, then I am probably confusing two different memories: Seeing a CDC 6000, and using a
Harris H800 remotely. I recall that whatever OS was running on the H800 was very
un-UNIX-like, but that's the extent of my memory.
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
3011
days inactive
3011
days old
16 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
aek＠bitsavers.org -
echristopherson＠gmail.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
kspt.tor＠gmail.com -
kylevowen＠gmail.com -
linimon＠lonesome.com -
mattislind＠gmail.com -
nf6x＠nf6x.net -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
rwiker＠gmail.com -
tingox＠gmail.com