8 May
2008
8 May
'08
2:40 p.m.
From: Matthias Knoth <mknoth at earthlink.net>
does anybody have information/source code/anything
about the Zilog Zeus System? It is a System III Unix derivate
running on a Z8001 16bit CPU
Gaaah, it's coming back to haunt me!
The NJ Computer Museum has a Zilog System 8000 model 21
what's probably running that!
One of my AT&T IS consulting assignments was running URTS
(Unix Regression Test Suite) on the SVR3 port
and examining the source code.
I'm unsure I have any of that on tape or printouts :-(
The comments were amusing such as the Z8000 CPU
forcing the Z80's "RETI" instruction
on the peripheral bus to reset the Z80 peripherals chips
interrupt daisy chain. The comments were something like
ld foo ; now watch my lips ...
mov bar ; RE-
ld baz ;
mov qux ; -TI
That's the first place I saw "deadbeef" as a magic number.
I really liked the System 8000 as a development system
since it had a firmware monitor that could be invoked
in case of a system crash to poke at the RAM.
I think that's where I learned how to repair the system
using the stand-alone bootable tapes such as
SASH: Stand Alone Shell,
and SADIE: the diagnostic tape.
When Exxon owned Zilog (around 1982), they had an office in
Rockefeller Center (NYC) for their office automation
featuring the Zilog System 8000 running Zeus.
Back then, breadbox sized Z8000 systems running Unix System III
were common, such as the Onyx, so the Unix manuals were all around
(Then 68k based systems took over, then Intel x86).
I like in an apartment, so I can't save 'em all :-(
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
I ran a Zilog System 8000 running Zeus daily
for quite a while back in the late 1980s.
But did you get to peek into the kernel
or use the maintenance programs?
From: "Mark Davidson" <mdavidson1963 at gmail.com>
I'd love to hear what people have as well...
I remember "porting" an RM/COBOL system for a doctor's office
from a CP/M system to ZEUS and loving the system.
I've never seen any on the collector/used market
I remember seeing 2 on the back of an old pickup truck,
for sale, at the Trenton Computer Fest in the late 80s.
Talk about a fall from grace!
The only RM/COBOL I remember seeing was a manual for the NCR Tower,
but I was a firm Unix/C kinda guy by then.
-- Jeff Jonas
8 May
8 May
7:07 p.m.
NCR Tower... yes, I used to work for a company that had several of those for
running RM/COBOL. Interesting little machines. I *think* they also had a
special OS just for RM work. I haven't seen one of these in a long time.
Mark
On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 7:40 AM, Jeff Jonas <jeffj at panix.com> wrote:
From: Matthias Knoth <mknoth at earthlink.net>
does anybody have information/source
code/anything
about the Zilog Zeus System? It is a System III Unix derivate
running on a Z8001 16bit CPU
Gaaah, it's coming back to haunt me!
The NJ Computer Museum has a Zilog System 8000 model 21
what's probably running that!
One of my AT&T IS consulting assignments was running URTS
(Unix Regression Test Suite) on the SVR3 port
and examining the source code.
I'm unsure I have any of that on tape or printouts :-(
The comments were amusing such as the Z8000 CPU
forcing the Z80's "RETI" instruction
on the peripheral bus to reset the Z80 peripherals chips
interrupt daisy chain. The comments were something like
ld foo ; now watch my lips ...
mov bar ; RE-
ld baz ;
mov qux ; -TI
That's the first place I saw "deadbeef" as a magic number.
I really liked the System 8000 as a development system
since it had a firmware monitor that could be invoked
in case of a system crash to poke at the RAM.
I think that's where I learned how to repair the system
using the stand-alone bootable tapes such as
SASH: Stand Alone Shell,
and SADIE: the diagnostic tape.
When Exxon owned Zilog (around 1982), they had an office in
Rockefeller Center (NYC) for their office automation
featuring the Zilog System 8000 running Zeus.
Back then, breadbox sized Z8000 systems running Unix System III
were common, such as the Onyx, so the Unix manuals were all around
(Then 68k based systems took over, then Intel x86).
I like in an apartment, so I can't save 'em all :-(
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
I ran a Zilog System 8000 running Zeus daily
for quite a while back in the late 1980s.
But did you get to peek into the kernel
or use the maintenance programs?
From: "Mark Davidson" <mdavidson1963 at gmail.com>
I'd love to hear what people have as well...
I remember "porting" an RM/COBOL system for a doctor's office
from a CP/M system to ZEUS and loving the system.
I've never seen any on the collector/used market
I remember seeing 2 on the back of an old pickup truck,
for sale, at the Trenton Computer Fest in the late 80s.
Talk about a fall from grace!
The only RM/COBOL I remember seeing was a manual for the NCR Tower,
but I was a firm Unix/C kinda guy by then.
-- Jeff Jonas
9 May
9 May
8:31 a.m.
On Thu, 8 May 2008, Mark Davidson wrote:
NCR Tower... yes, I used to work for a company that
had several of those for
running RM/COBOL. Interesting little machines. I *think* they also had a
special OS just for RM work. I haven't seen one of these in a long time.
I got a ncr tower32 some time ago from a friend, was my intention to make
a backup of its hardrives, sadly the psu survied only one powering up, and
given my limited space for storage I decied to pull all cards, backplates
and hardrives from it, hope one day maybe to figure out what the pinout
for the psu was and try to powering the whole lot up again.
If anything else fails at the very least try to get the harddrives dumped,
still searching for a mfm controler for that job though, Have a 2090 mfm
card for my amiga systmes, but I havent been able to make that talk to
those 200mb mfm drives the ncr used.
Regards Jacob Dahl Pind
12:52 p.m.
Jacob Dahl Pind wrote:
On Thu, 8 May 2008, Mark Davidson wrote:
What model? Although my model 700 is likely staying back in England (too heavy
to ship, unfortunately), I think I might have backups of the hard drives here
with me in the US and can have a look if needed. They're raw 'dd' dumps, but I
expect they'll work to an identical-or-larger drive.
NCR Tower... yes, I used to work for a company
that had several of
those for
running RM/COBOL. Interesting little machines. I *think* they also
had a
special OS just for RM work. I haven't seen one of these in a long time.
I got a ncr tower32 some time ago from a friend, was my intention to
make a backup of its hardrives sadly the psu survied only one powering
up, and given my limited space for storage I decied to pull all cards,
backplates and hardrives from it, hope one day maybe to figure out what
the pinout for the psu was and try to powering the whole lot up again.
I did once figure out the pinout for one of the 600 models for someone as
theirs had a broken PSU - I'll have a look to see if I still have it. It might
be model-specific though; I know that PSU was different to the one in my 700.
If anything else fails at the very least try to get
the harddrives
dumped, still searching for a mfm controler for that job though, Have a
2090 mfm card for my amiga systmes, but I havent been able to make that
talk to those 200mb mfm drives the ncr used.
Oh. That'll teach me to reply before reading the whole message :-) Sounds like
yours was a 4xx/5xx/6xx then, not a 7xx/8xx (which were SCSI).
Note that the data on the 700's disks was byte-swapped (i.e. "foobar"
appears
as "ofbora"), so it needed converting before modern software (Linux in my
case) would make sense of it - your disk contents may well be the same. I
can't remember now if Linux supported NCR's partition layout right off, or if
I had to hack that.
cheers
Jules
6:57 p.m.
On Fri, 9 May 2008, Jules Richardson wrote:
Would be very helpfull, would save me having to trace the power lines on
the boards.
The controler card has a MFM controler, with room for two data cables and
two control onces and a single scsi connector, the scsi connector was only
used for a archive corp interface board that does scsi to qic-02 interface
Jacob Dahl Pind wrote:
a tower32 model 3460, think what is a 600 type.
On Thu, 8 May 2008, Mark Davidson wrote:
What model? Although my model 700 is likely staying back in England (too
heavy to ship, unfortunately), I think I might have backups of the hard
drives here with me in the US and can have a look if needed. They're raw 'dd'
dumps, but I expect they'll work to an identical-or-larger drive. NCR Tower... yes, I used to work for a company
that had several of those
for
running RM/COBOL. Interesting little machines. I *think* they also had a
special OS just for RM work. I haven't seen one of these in a long time.
I got a ncr tower32 some time ago from a friend, was my intention to make a
backup of its hardrives sadly the psu
survied only one powering up, and given my limited space for
storage I decied to pull all cards, backplates and hardrives from it, hope
one day maybe to figure out what the pinout for the psu was and try to
powering the whole lot up again.
I did once figure out the pinout for one of the 600 models for someone as
theirs had a broken PSU - I'll have a look to see if I still have it. It
might be model-specific though; I know that PSU was different to the one in
my 700. If anything
else fails at the very least try to get the harddrives dumped,
still searching for a mfm controler for that job though, Have a 2090 mfm
card for my amiga systmes, but I havent been able to make that talk to
those 200mb mfm drives the ncr used.
Oh. That'll teach me to reply before reading the whole message :-) Sounds
like yours was a 4xx/5xx/6xx then, not a 7xx/8xx (which were SCSI). from what I have been able to dig up.
Note that the data on the 700's disks was
byte-swapped (i.e. "foobar" appears
as "ofbora"), so it needed converting before modern software (Linux in my
case) would make sense of it - your disk contents may well be the same. I
can't remember now if Linux supported NCR's partition layout right off, or if
I had to hack that.
If just I can get one of my mfm cards be it the 2090 in my amiga 3000 or
the noname lcs one to work with the drives so I can get dd image of them,
I can always worry about how to make sense of the data later.
Is a good excuise work with my amigas again, havent used them in a while
even though they are sitting on my deck right in front of me.
regards Jacob Dahl Pind
10 May
10 May
4:36 a.m.
On May 8, 2008, at 10:40 AM, Jeff Jonas wrote:
That may actually be one of my old systems. I got three of them
in the late 80s, kept two of them for a few years, then sent them
along to new homes.
Exxon Office Systems had a large facility near Princeton, NJ,
where a lot of System 8000 work was done. My systems came indirectly
Nope...just userland programming.
Was it a short rack and a tall rack? If so, those were likely mine.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
does anybody
have information/source code/anything
about the Zilog Zeus System? It is a System III Unix derivate
running on a Z8001 16bit CPU
Gaaah, it's coming back to haunt me!
The NJ Computer Museum has a Zilog System 8000 model 21
what's probably running that! from that facility.
From: Dave
McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
I ran a Zilog System 8000 running Zeus daily
for quite a while back in the late 1980s.
But did you get to peek into the kernel
or use the maintenance programs? I'd love
to hear what people have as well...
I remember "porting" an RM/COBOL system for a doctor's office
from a CP/M system to ZEUS and loving the system.
I've never seen any on the collector/used market
I remember seeing 2 on the back of an old pickup truck,
for sale, at the Trenton Computer Fest in the late 80s.
Talk about a fall from grace! 
5:14 a.m.
>> That may actually be one of my old systems. I
got three of them in the
late 80s, kept two of them for a few years, then sent them
along to new
homes.
Ours here in NJ came from someone in northern Virginia, who got in turn got
it from a friend of his at a company called CCI (Computer Consoles Inc.),
but I don't know the timeframe of that transaction.
4:36 p.m.
On May 10, 2008, at 1:14 AM, Evan Koblentz wrote:
Ahh well, it was a chance at least. :) There weren't too many
System 8000s in private hands in NJ as far as I'm aware.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
>> That
may actually be one of my old systems. I got three of them
>> in the
late 80s, kept two of them for a few years, then sent them along to
new
homes.
Ours here in NJ came from someone in northern Virginia, who got in
turn got
it from a friend of his at a company called CCI (Computer Consoles
Inc.),
but I don't know the timeframe of that transaction. 
11:16 p.m.
From: mcguire at neurotica.com
On May 10, 2008, at 1:14 AM, Evan Koblentz wrote:
Ahh well, it was a chance at least. :) There weren't too many
System 8000s in private hands in NJ as far as I'm aware.
Hi
How much memory did the System 8000 require to run?
I wonder if the code could be adapted to run on an Olivetti M20.
These could have 512K of RAM for the what they did in memory
management. The Black & White display only took 16K of that
space.
I've added a hard disk to mine so I can run larger code than
would be practical on a floppy only system.
Dwight
_________________________________________________________________
Get Free (PRODUCT) RED? Emoticons, Winks and Display Pics.
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>>
That may actually be one of my old systems. I got three of them
>> in the
late 80s, kept two of them for a few years, then sent them along
to
new
homes.
Ours here in NJ came from someone in northern Virginia, who got in
turn got
it from a friend of his at a company called CCI (Computer Consoles
Inc.),
but I don't know the timeframe of that transaction.
11 May
11 May
12:24 p.m.
dwight elvey wrote:
How much memory did the System 8000 require to run?
I wonder if the code could be adapted to run on an Olivetti M20.
These could have 512K of RAM for the what they did in memory
management. The Black & White display only took 16K of that
space.
I've added a hard disk to mine so I can run larger code than
would be practical on a floppy only system.
I'm fairly certain mine had 512KB, but that was a long time ago. I
don't know what the minimum requirement was.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
6075
days inactive
6078
days old
9 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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dkelvey＠hotmail.com -
evan＠snarc.net -
jeffj＠panix.com -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
mdavidson1963＠gmail.com -
rachael＠telefisk.org