21 Apr
2016
21 Apr
'16
2:04 p.m.
Mark J. Blair wrote:
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.
I think that you were remembering the console of one of the Control Data
6000/Cyber-70 series computers that you may have seen somewhere. This
series of Control Data machines were famous for their consoles with two
large, round, green-phosphor monitors that used vector drawn-characters
(generated by one of the Peripheral Processors). Most of the normal
system screens were all text, but there were some special programs
written (including a nice graphical chess game, a little program that
would put up eyes on the screens that would look around and blink, and
some others that don't come to mind at the moment.
I operated one of these systems
(a Control Data Cyber 73 --
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/cdc/cyber/brochures/Cyber70_Mod73
_Feb71.pdf)
at Tektronix in Beaverton, Oregon, from 1977 through around 1980. It
had two CPUs, 131K (60-bit words) of core, ECS (extended core storage),
and 20 Peripheral Processors, a combined punched card reader/punch,
something like 12 "washing machine" type multi-platter cartridge disk
drives (that held something like 300 MB each), two 9-track tape drives
and one 7-track tape drive. It also had a big chain printer that was
noisy, but pretty fast.
The machine had a channel interface to a Modcomp communications
processor (with communication maintained by one or more Peripheral
Processor programs), that provided serial I/O to terminals scattered all
over the company by some kind of serial concentrator that I can't
remember. There was also a big modem pool for dial-in use. The
system ran a locally-modified version of the Kronos Timeshared operating
system. The system was used primarily by engineering departments
(research and product development) for CAD and CAD software development,
circuit simulation (SPICE), cross-assembling microprocessor code, and
mathematical modeling.
The machine was an all-transistor design, based on the CDC 6600
processor. It was liquid cooled, and had a large cooler unit that sat
with the machine that cooled the coolant (water) and circulated it
through the chassis, venting the heat (which was substantial) through a
special venting system. I remember the CDC Field guys talking about
horror stories when there were leaks in the cooling system. We never
had any problems while I was there.
One day I was at the console when one of the big high-voltage rectifier
tubes that were in the console decided to short.
I was watching one of the system monitor displays, and suddenly I saw
the display collapse into a single very bright horizontal line. I noted
that the other display also did the same thing. I also heard a funny
noise that sounded kind of scary, so I started to push my wheeled chair
away from the console, but not soon enough to avoid a shower of sparks
and even some molten metal that spewed out from the console. I had a
few small burns on my arms, and one little blob of molten metal burned a
hole in my pant leg. One of the other operators in the machine room
managed to hit the power switch for the console and shut it off. Then
the fire suppression alarm went off indicating that the Halon was going
to dump soon, so he ran back and hit the override since the sparking and
smoke had settled once the power was off. Despite this, the fire
department showed up (the fire suppression system in the computer room
had a direct line to the fire department), and we had to tell them it
was a (semi) false alarm.
The machine kept running just fine, and we were able to keep tabs on it
with a serial terminal hooked up to the machine that had a program
running that kind of emulated the console displays. The CDC guys were
there very quickly, and ended up having to replace two (IIRC) big
rectifier tubes, and one burnt up power resistor. When they powered it
up, the screens came up just as they were before the event occurred, and
all was well.
I really enjoyed those days. The machine was really cool, and I have a
lot of great memories of those times.
The Living Computer Museum (http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org) in
Seattle, WA, has rescued a smaller version of a system like this based
on the 6500 processor that is undergoing restoration.
Sorry for changing the subject (but at least I updated it in the
Subject: line).
-Rick
--
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
21 Apr
21 Apr
2:47 p.m.
On Apr 21, 2016, at 2:04 PM, Rick Bensene <rickb at
bensene.com> wrote:
...
The machine was an all-transistor design, based on the CDC 6600
processor. It was liquid cooled, and had a large cooler unit that sat
with the machine that cooled the coolant (water) and circulated it
through the chassis, venting the heat (which was substantial) through a
special venting system. I remember the CDC Field guys talking about
horror stories when there were leaks in the cooling system. We never
had any problems while I was there.
Rick,
Nice memories, thanks for posting that. I don't think there are any Cyber 70 (CDC
6000 series) systems still running, but there's one in emulation, running PLATO. See
cyber1.org. It even has emulated console tubes...
The machine itself was cooled with Freon (the non-PC flavor). The chilled water
you're referring to would take heat away from the Freon cooling system compressors (at
the end of each of the CPU cabinets).
One day I was at the console when one of the big
high-voltage rectifier
tubes that were in the console decided to short.
I was watching one of the system monitor displays, and suddenly I saw
the display collapse into a single very bright horizontal line. I noted
that the other display also did the same thing. I also heard a funny
noise that sounded kind of scary, so I started to push my wheeled chair
away from the console, but not soon enough to avoid a shower of sparks
and even some molten metal that spewed out from the console.
Yikes. I think the rectifiers were solid state. But the deflection amplifiers used high
power triodes (3CX100A5) as the final amplifier stage, running around 3 kV anode voltage.
If something goes wrong with those, sparks would definitely be a possibility. And
you'd expect to see a line (horizontal or vertical).
paul
5:01 p.m.
From: Paul Koning
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2016 11:48 AM
I don't think there are any Cyber 70 (CDC 6000
series) systems still
running, but there's one in emulation, running PLATO. See cyber1.org.
It even has emulated console tubes...
I can't speak to Cyber 70 systems, but the 6500 at LCM runs SCOPE, KRONOS,
and NOS quite nicely. Getting it to this point was a very big project.
You should come visit, and talk to the principal engineer who did most of
the work of making it run.
Rich
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
8:49 p.m.
On Apr 21, 2016, at 5:01 PM, Rich Alderson <RichA
at LivingComputerMuseum.org> wrote:
From: Paul Koning
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2016 11:48 AM
Sorry, I was unclear, I meant production machines. Yes, you've got yours, and
that's quite an achievement.
I don't think there are any Cyber 70 (CDC
6000 series) systems still
running, but there's one in emulation, running PLATO. See cyber1.org.
It even has emulated console tubes...
I can't speak to Cyber 70 systems, but the 6500 at LCM runs SCOPE, KRONOS,
and NOS quite nicely. Getting it to this point was a very big project. You should come visit, and talk to the principal
engineer who did most of
the work of making it run.
Not sure if I'll get to your area, but if I do, I'll plan on that.
paul
3:55 p.m.
New subject: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer
On 04/21/2016 11:04 AM, Rick Bensene wrote:
I think that you were remembering the console of one
of the Control
Data 6000/Cyber-70 series computers that you may have seen somewhere.
This series of Control Data machines were famous for their consoles
with two large, round, green-phosphor monitors that used vector
drawn-characters (generated by one of the Peripheral Processors).
Most of the normal system screens were all text, but there were some
special programs written (including a nice graphical chess game, a
little program that would put up eyes on the screens that would look
around and blink, and some others that don't come to mind at the
moment.
You forgot BAT - the baseball game. Chess 3.0 used the display, but I
believe that the pieces and board were formed from characters.
During my tenure at CDC SSD, I wrote quite a bit of CP and PP code for
these beasts. The 6000 series systems were recognizable as simple beige
and gray cabinetry. The CYBERs are more wood-grain and blue glass.
As I recall the systems numbering from low to high end:
CYBER 72 - 1 CYBER 73 CPU with extra "wait" states, mostly as a
marketing gimmick to sell at a lower price than the 73. Most CEs knew
how to disable the slowdown, but were told in no uncertain terms that
doing so for a customer was a capital offense and would not be tolerated.
6400 = CYBER 73- Jim Thorton-designed "plain" CPU; unified
arithmetic/logical unit, no instruction "stack". Timing very
straightforward to calculate.
6500 = two 6400 CPUs in the same box, only one of which could be in
monitor/supervisor mode at any time. Shared memory.
6600 = CYBER 74 - Seymour Cray's multiple funcitonal unit CPU, with a
primitive instruction cache and scheduler.
6700 = one 6600 CPU and one 6400 CPU in the same box, shared memory.
6415 - a 6400 with missing PPUs and minimum central memory--which
really had to be a marketing gimmick, since the only thing that really
defined a PPU was a couple of registers, channel interface and a 4KW
core module--the rest of the logic was time-shared by all PPUs.
There were other oddball QSEs, extra PPU versions, etc. I've been told
that S/N 1 6600 gave different floating-point results from subsequent
systems.
Ten was a number that figured into various aspects. The clock was
nomially 10 MHz; a minor cycle was therefore 100 nsec and a major cycle
1 usec. Each central memory word was 60 bits, holding 10 6-bit
characters. As mentioned, there were 10 PPUs, with 12-bit memory
words, so 5 PPU words comprised on CPU word.
Initially, the maximum central memory size was 131KW; late in the
series, a 262KW option was added, necessitating extensive code changes,
as some code treated the 18-bit addresses as signed quantities, not
unsigned. Arithmetic was ones' complement.
User programs occupied contiguous memory; an individual user had an
"exchange package" that reflected its register contents as well as field
length and relocation address. Context changes were performed by an
"exchange jump" instruction initiated from either any PPU or the CPU (if
the CEJ option was installed). It swapped the contents of the exchange
package with the working registers.
What was surprising is how long the architecture lasted well into the
1980s, given the non-paging/non segmented memory management and oddball
word size.
For a couple of years, I worked on the development a system using up to
4 CPUs with a common 4MW of bulk core (ECS). Since ECS transfers, after
an initial startup overhead ran at full memory speed, a model was
contrived that divided programs up into modules to create "chains", with
inter-module communication, each module resident in either ECS or in a
CPU. The idea is that you could swap a module in where resources were
available. Modules did not talk to PPUs as was the case for normal
programs, but rather to a per-CPU I/O supervisor, which then
communicated with PPUs.
All this to get a realtime transaction-oriented facility implemented on
a system that was designed for batch processing. It was
interesting--and sadly, lost in the sands of time.
--Chuck
4:36 p.m.
New subject: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer
On Apr 21, 2016, at 3:55 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at
sydex.com> wrote:
...
Ten was a number that figured into various aspects. The clock was
nomially 10 MHz;
In serial numbers 1-7 only nominally -- the clock was a ring oscillator, tuned by tweaking
wire lengths. Starting with serial number 8, there's a crystal oscillator (in the ECS
controller if ECS is present, otherwise in the CPU).
...
Initially, the maximum central memory size was 131KW; late in the
series, a 262KW option was added, necessitating extensive code changes,
I thought the 70 series (6000 series) was 131 kW max because the top bit is the "ECS
active" bit. 170 series makes it 262k.
...
For a couple of years, I worked on the development a system using up to
4 CPUs with a common 4MW of bulk core (ECS). Since ECS transfers, after
an initial startup overhead ran at full memory speed, a model was
contrived that divided programs up into modules to create "chains", with
inter-module communication, each module resident in either ECS or in a
CPU.
Neat. PLATO made extensive use of ECS, swapping per-terminal state and programs in and
out of ECS for fast interactive service. ECS was also where most I/O buffers went, with
PPUs doing disk and terminal I/O from/to ECS rather than central memory. A dual mainframe
6500 system (4 "unified" processors total) did a decent job supporting 600
concurrent logged-in terminals, out of a total of 1008 connected. That was around 1977
when I worked on that system at the U of Illinois.
paul
7:33 p.m.
New subject: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer
On 04/21/2016 01:36 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
Yup, that's why I used the word "nominally". The clock distribution
circuitry in the 6600 was a study all by itself. Mike Miller said that
his first job right out of school was measuring the various loops on the
back of the machine at Chippewa Falls to which Seymour had attached tags
that simply said "tune".
On Apr 21, 2016, at 3:55 PM, Chuck Guzis
<cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
... Ten was a number that figured into various aspects. The clock
was nomially 10 MHz;
In serial numbers 1-7 only nominally -- the clock was a ring
oscillator, tuned by tweaking wire lengths. Starting with serial
number 8, there's a crystal oscillator (in the ECS controller if ECS
is present, otherwise in the CPU). I thought the 70 series (6000 series) was 131 kW max
because the top
bit is the "ECS active" bit. 170 series makes it 262k.
IIRC, the SCOPE aka. NOS/BE team at SVLOPS didn't have access to a real
operational 170, so a 70 was jerry-rigged by the CEs there for
development purposes. There was a lot of weird stuff at one time in
Sunnyvale. We had the only extant STAR 1-Bs for a time, for
example--mostly held together with chewing gum and baling wire, it
seemed. Took hours to compile a kernel--if the machines stayed up that
long.
Neat. PLATO made extensive use of ECS, swapping
per-terminal state
and programs in and out of ECS for fast interactive service. ECS was
also where most I/O buffers went, with PPUs doing disk and terminal
I/O from/to ECS rather than central memory. A dual mainframe 6500
system (4 "unified" processors total) did a decent job supporting 600
concurrent logged-in terminals, out of a total of 1008 connected.
That was around 1977 when I worked on that system at the U of
Illinois.
Was that UIUC? I processed some CYBER tapes from there a couple of
years ago--there's an archivist there who uses us to retrieve contents
of various dusty items.
--Chuck
8:50 p.m.
New subject: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer
On Apr 21, 2016, at 7:33 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at
sydex.com> wrote:
...
Yup. A couple of us helped put the PLATO copy running on the DtCyber emulator together,
see cyber1.org.
paul
Neat. PLATO made extensive use of ECS, swapping
per-terminal state
and programs in and out of ECS for fast interactive service. ECS was
also where most I/O buffers went, with PPUs doing disk and terminal
I/O from/to ECS rather than central memory. A dual mainframe 6500
system (4 "unified" processors total) did a decent job supporting 600
concurrent logged-in terminals, out of a total of 1008 connected.
That was around 1977 when I worked on that system at the U of
Illinois.
Was that UIUC? I processed some CYBER tapes from there a couple of
years ago--there's an archivist there who uses us to retrieve contents
of various dusty items. 
23 Apr
23 Apr
1:06 p.m.
New subject: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer
Now that we're on the subject of 6600's and the like... I have a bit
of a puzzle. I have some CDC 7600 modules; these consist of 8 thin
PCB's, with metal shielding in between. On the back, there are 8 rows
of 16 pins, and on the front there are 8 rows of 6 recessed pins,
staggered (I believe for testing/debugging purposes). On the top and
bottom of the front is a tab with a screwhole in it, black like the
entire front of the modules, and as wide as the module it self. So far
so good, this matches all the photo's of 7600 modules I've seen
online.
Now, I also have some modules that are the same form factor, same
number of pins in the back, but they're different. There's only 4
pcb's, no shielding between them, except in the middle, 4 x 8 pins in
the front, and the tabs on the top and bottom of the front are small
(not as wide as the module itself, and silver-colored. The pcb's are
not connected with soldered-in wiring, but with goldplated wires that
run between sockets in the pcb's. On the pcb's are loose transistors,
resistors, etc like in the 7600 modules, but also some square Fujitsu
ECL IC's (100550 and the like), with date codes that indicate 1983,
which sounds a bit late for a 7600.
Any idea what these modules might have been used in?
Camiel
On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 2:50 AM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
On Apr 21, 2016, at 7:33 PM, Chuck Guzis
<cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
...
Yup. A couple of us helped put the PLATO copy running on the DtCyber emulator together,
see cyber1.org.
paul
Neat. PLATO made extensive use of ECS, swapping
per-terminal state
and programs in and out of ECS for fast interactive service. ECS was
also where most I/O buffers went, with PPUs doing disk and terminal
I/O from/to ECS rather than central memory. A dual mainframe 6500
system (4 "unified" processors total) did a decent job supporting 600
concurrent logged-in terminals, out of a total of 1008 connected.
That was around 1977 when I worked on that system at the U of
Illinois.
Was that UIUC? I processed some CYBER tapes from there a couple of
years ago--there's an archivist there who uses us to retrieve contents
of various dusty items.
3008
days inactive
3010
days old
8 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
cclist＠sydex.com -
iamcamiel＠gmail.com -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
RichA＠LivingComputerMuseum.org -
rickb＠bensene.com