24 Nov
2004
24 Nov
'04
1:25 a.m.
Does anyone on this list play with the Masscomp computers?
Joe
2:04 a.m.
At 01:45 PM 11/24/04 +0100, you wrote:
"Joe R." wrote:
I have three of them plus a stack of manuals so I don't really need
help. I was just wondering if anyone else was interested in them and what
kind of experience they'd had with them. Mine appear to be MC5600s with a
single CPU card (68020), two 2 mb memory cards, a 85Mb hard errive and 5
1/4" floppy drive, a Multibus ethernet card, a Burr Brown Multibus 72
channel data aquisition card, XYLogics 451 (IIRC) Multibus Winchester
controller card, a NCR Multibus HPSIO card with 8 serial ports and one
parallel port and some others that I don't remember at the moment. Reading
the manuals it looks like they were killer machines back in their day.
These appear to be complete and should be functional but I haven't tested
them yet. I took one completely apart yesterday and got photos of
everything. I'll edit and post them when I have time.
joe
Does anyone on this list play with the Masscomp computers?
I have one, but haven't spent much time on it yet. How can I help you?
Bert
1:47 a.m.
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 07:25 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
Does anyone on this list play with the Masscomp
computers?
I'm the only person I've ever seen ask about them on here :)
They seem to be pretty much unknown. I haven't found the keyboard/mouse
yet for the one at the museum, so seeing what state it's in is a long
term project at present! It's also missing a castor, but that's the
least of the problems ;)
Andrew K. Bressen replied to me with the following info:
///
Masscomp did indeed make multi-cpu machines,
and also had an os called RTU (Real Time Unix).
They also had another unix called, I think, OS/32.
I don't know which one was used by the multiprocessor boxes.
I think the CPUs were mostly 68k's,
system bus might have been multibus.
They had early successes as graphics/cad workstations,
so yes they had mice. Masscomp was bought by Concurrent,
so there used to be some info on the concurrent users
group web pages at www.ccuruser.org. That seems gone now,
but archive.org might help you dig up some old stuff there.
I used to help run one at the Columbia U CS dept; I remember that the
ethernet card had an 80186 that the OS downloaded a network stack to.
I seem to recall a hardcoded 14 or 15-hop limit on the IP stack on the
version we had, which confused us for a while when we wondered why the
machine would talk to some machines but not others.
I believe the owner of vitriol.com may still have a number of
operational or nearly-operational masscomps.
///
2:15 a.m.
At 12:47 PM 11/24/04 +0000, you wrote:
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 07:25 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
Yeap, each chassis can have up to four CPU cards. I think the dual
chasssis machines could have up to eight but I'd have to check on that.
Does anyone on this list play with the Masscomp
computers?
I'm the only person I've ever seen ask about them on here :)
They seem to be pretty much unknown. I haven't found the keyboard/mouse
yet for the one at the museum, so seeing what state it's in is a long
term project at present! It's also missing a castor, but that's the
least of the problems ;)
Andrew K. Bressen replied to me with the following info:
///
Masscomp did indeed make multi-cpu machines, and also had an os called RTU (Real Time Unix).
Yeap, I just sent that manual to Al K. I have at least three other
manuals here.
They also had another unix called, I think, OS/32.
I don't know which one was used by the multiprocessor boxes.
I think the CPUs were mostly 68k's,
The CPU in mine is 68020. It's card looks similar to Multibus but is
longer and has different connector. (I'll post pictures later.) It plugs
into the SMI bus. There's also a Multibus chassis in them for the IO cards
AND there's also STD+ card sockets in them for data acquisition cards. STD+
is an enhancment of the regular STD bus. Some of them also had VME sockets!
The use of four different busses really surprised me.
system bus might have been multibus.
They had early successes as graphics/cad workstations,
so yes they had mice.
Some did, some didn't. Some only used termials but others had graphics
capabilities. I think mine all just used terminals.
Masscomp was bought by Concurrent,
so there used to be some info on the concurrent users
group web pages at www.ccuruser.org. That seems gone now,
but archive.org might help you dig up some old stuff there.
There'll be lots more there soon!
I used to help run one at the Columbia U CS dept; I remember that the
ethernet card had an 80186 that the OS downloaded a network stack to.
It uses an Excelan EXOS 201 Intelligent Multibus Ethernet Controller. I
have manuals for it. One of them has already gone to Al.
I seem to recall a hardcoded 14 or 15-hop limit on the
IP stack on the
version we had, which confused us for a while when we wondered why the
machine would talk to some machines but not others.
I believe the owner of vitriol.com may still have a number of
operational or nearly-operational masscomps.
I'll check and see if they want some more. These are too neat to destroy.
Joe
///
2:33 a.m.
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 08:15 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
I'll have to pull the cover off our one sometime just to see what it has
inside. Would be annoying to find it's just a shell (although it's heavy
enough that there's concrete in there if not :)
Have you (or someone else) got OS media, just in case we need copies for
ours?
Shame, that. Ours has graphical capability; four BNC sockets on the back
and a big CAD monitor with it (which is what drew me to the system - one
of my big interests is in graphics workstations)
Masscomp did
indeed make multi-cpu machines,
Yeap, each chassis can have up to four CPU cards. I think the dual
chasssis machines could have up to eight but I'd have to check on that. and also had an
os called RTU (Real Time Unix).
Yeap, I just sent that manual to Al K. I have at least three other
manuals here. The CPU in mine is 68020. It's card looks
similar to Multibus but is
longer and has different connector. (I'll post pictures later.) It plugs
into the SMI bus. There's also a Multibus chassis in them for the IO cards
AND there's also STD+ card sockets in them for data acquisition cards. STD+
is an enhancment of the regular STD bus. Some of them also had VME sockets!
The use of four different busses really surprised me.
Heh, that does seem to be slight overkill.
They had early
successes as graphics/cad workstations,
so yes they had mice.
Some did, some didn't. Some only used termials but others had graphics
capabilities. I think mine all just used terminals. Masscomp was bought by Concurrent,
yay! :-)
so there used to be some info on the concurrent
users
group web pages at www.ccuruser.org. That seems gone now,
but archive.org might help you dig up some old stuff there.
There'll be lots more there soon! It uses an Excelan EXOS 201 Intelligent Multibus
Ethernet Controller. I
have manuals for it. One of them has already gone to Al.
I wonder if that's the same one as in my NCR Tower (which is also
multibus for the IO boards). EXOS rings a bell.
cheers
Jules
12:08 p.m.
At 01:33 PM 11/24/04 +0000, you wrote:
Shame, that. Ours has graphical capability; four BNC sockets on the back
and a big CAD monitor with it (which is what drew me to the system - one
of my big interests is in graphics workstations)
Just checked mine today to be sure. It does not have any graphics outputs.
I'll post a picture soon and you can compare against it. Or Al should
have the manual poated soon. I'd guess that they're arriving at his place
any day now.
Just out of curiousity, let me know what kinds of Multibus card you find
in the NCR tower.
Joe
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 08:15 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
I'll have to pull the cover off our one sometime just to see what it has
inside. Would be annoying to find it's just a shell (although it's heavy
enough that there's concrete in there if not :)
Have you (or someone else) got OS media, just in case we need copies for
ours?
I have some of it. There are one of two disks inside of some of the
machines. But I can probably do better than that! I just parted out four of
them today and they all had 85Mb hard drives. I can ship you the drives!
Masscomp
did indeed make multi-cpu machines,
Yeap, each chassis can have up to four CPU cards. I think the dual
chasssis machines could have up to eight but I'd have to check on that. and also
had an os called RTU (Real Time Unix).
Yeap, I just sent that manual to Al K. I have at least three other
manuals here. The CPU in mine is 68020. It's card looks
similar to Multibus but is
longer and has different connector. (I'll post pictures later.) It plugs
into the SMI bus. There's also a Multibus chassis in them for the IO cards
AND there's also STD+ card sockets in them for data acquisition cards. STD+
is an enhancment of the regular STD bus. Some of them also had VME sockets!
The use of four different busses really surprised me.
Heh, that does seem to be slight overkill.
They had
early successes as graphics/cad workstations,
so yes they had mice.
Some did, some didn't. Some only used termials but others had graphics
capabilities. I think mine all just used terminals. Masscomp was bought by Concurrent,
yay! :-)
so there used to be some info on the concurrent
users
group web pages at www.ccuruser.org. That seems gone now,
but archive.org might help you dig up some old stuff there.
There'll be lots more there soon! It uses an Excelan EXOS 201 Intelligent
Multibus Ethernet Controller. I
have manuals for it. One of them has already gone to Al.
I wonder if that's the same one as in my NCR Tower (which is also
multibus for the IO boards). EXOS rings a bell.
cheers
Jules
12:30 p.m.
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 18:08 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
Uh oh - I reckon that might be a little expensive :)
I'll post a picture soon and you can compare against it. Or Al should
have the manual poated soon. I'd guess that they're arriving at his place
any day now.
Just out of curiousity, let me know what kinds of Multibus card you find
in the NCR tower.
Hmm, well I've got the board here - it's an Excelan board, but doesn't
give a model number. Has two ROM chips in the centre (Labelled NX200H,
but I expect that's an NCR label). 80186 CPU toward the top-right to
drive things, and 128KB of RAM in two banks (with room for another
128KB)
I remember EXOS from the photocopied documentation that I have I'm sure,
but I can't get at that easily to check right now.
cheers
Jules
Have you (or
someone else) got OS media, just in case we need copies for
ours?
I have some of it. There are one of two disks inside of some of the
machines. But I can probably do better than that! I just parted out four of
them today and they all had 85Mb hard drives. I can ship you the drives! It uses an Excelan EXOS 201 Intelligent Multibus
Ethernet Controller. I
have manuals for it. One of them has already gone to Al.
I wonder if that's the same one as in my NCR Tower (which is also
multibus for the IO boards). EXOS rings a bell.
3:43 p.m.
At 11:30 PM 11/24/04 +0000, you wrote:
I'll post a picture soon and you can compare against it. Or Al should
have the manual poated soon. I'd guess that they're arriving at his place
any day now.
Just out of curiousity, let me know what kinds of Multibus card you find
in the NCR tower.
Hmm, well I've got the board here - it's an Excelan board, but doesn't
give a model number. Has two ROM chips in the centre (Labelled NX200H,
but I expect that's an NCR label). 80186 CPU toward the top-right to
drive things, and 128KB of RAM in two banks (with room for another
128KB)
The 80186 CPU and 128k sound right the the Excelan board. I just checked
the pictures that I took and I realized that the card in that computer was
an EXOS 201 made Computing Machinery Corp. I have an Excelan card in
another machine, I'll get a picture of it later.
Joe
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 18:08 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
Uh oh - I reckon that might be a little expensive :)
It shouldn't be too expensive. They're FH 5 1/4" drives not 8".
Have you
(or someone else) got OS media, just in case we need copies for
ours?
I have some of it. There are one of two disks inside of some of the
machines. But I can probably do better than that! I just parted out four of
them today and they all had 85Mb hard drives. I can ship you the drives!
> >> It uses an Excelan EXOS 201 Intelligent Multibus Ethernet
Controller. I
have manuals
for it. One of them has already gone to Al.
I wonder if that's the same one as in my NCR Tower (which is also
multibus for the IO boards). EXOS rings a bell.
I remember EXOS from the photocopied documentation that I have I'm sure,
but I can't get at that easily to check right now.
cheers
Jules
4:15 p.m.
New subject: Pictures Re: Masscomp computers?
OK I just finished posting some pictures of the Masscomp machine that I
took apart. Here they are:
Here is a picture of the front
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/front.jpg>. This particular unit is
in a rack mount chassis and the top cover is ajar. Here
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/top.jpg> is a picture of the top
view. It's a 19" wide chassis so you can get an idea of how long it is. And
gues what's it's even heavier than it looks!!! The manual says that it
weighs 120 pounds. Here is a picture of the insides with the top removed.
The SMI and Multibus boards all fit in the same card cage but have
different connectors. The bottom three cards are the CPU card (bottom slot)
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/masscomp%20CPU.jpg>. It's what
Masscomp calls a CMPU and has a 68020 CPU. Note that it fits the SMI bus.
Then two CMM 2Mb memory cards
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/Memory.jpg>. The next card up is the
Auxillery Function Module
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/Aux%20Func%20Module.jpg> and it's
also a SMI card. The SMI and Mutlibus cards are intermixed to a degree but
I haven't taken the time to figure out the order of their mixing.
Multibus cards:
In no particular order these are: (1) this card that I can't remember
what it is <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/unknown.jpg>. (2) This
Burr Brown MP830-72 data aquisition card
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/Burr%20Brown%20MP830-72.jpg>. (3)
This EXOS 210 Ethernet card made by Computing Machinery CDorp
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/Computing%20Machinery%20Corp%20EXOS%2
0201%20Ethernet.jpg>. Note that the Masscomp card cage has DEEP slots and
all the standard size Multibus cards sit very low in it. Therefore all the
standard size Multibus cards have thse green extensions hooked onto them as
soon in this picture. (4) Next is a NCR HPSIO Intelligent I/O card with 8
RS-232 ports and one parallel port
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/NCR%20HPSIO.jpg>. (5) Then a Data
Translation DT 5712 data acquisition card
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/data%20translation%20DT5712.jpg>.
(6) The last card in the system (topmost) is a XMC (hard)disk/floppy/tape
controller
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/XMC%20disk-floppy-tape%20controller%2
0xylogic%20431.jpg>. I believe this actually a XYLogics 431 card.
OK that's all.
Joe
25 Nov
25 Nov
1:51 a.m.
New subject: Pictures Re: Masscomp computers?
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 22:15 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
OK I just finished posting some pictures of the
Masscomp machine that I
took apart. Here they are:
Thanks for those! That's very different to our machine - ours is a big
tower setup; going from memory about 10" wide, maybe 24" deep and 36"
tall. If it weren't an hour's drive away I'd go take a look at it now
and see what it has inside...
In no particular order these are: (1) this card
that I can't remember
what it is <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/unknown.jpg>.
Not much in the way of large chips on that - given that and the size of
the connectors, it suggests some sort of data aquisition again to me, or
parallel output to something...
(6) The last card in the system (topmost) is a XMC
(hard)disk/floppy/tape
controller
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/XMC%20disk-floppy-tape%20controller%2
0xylogic%20431.jpg>. I believe this actually a XYLogics 431 card.
Hmm, that looks vaguely like NCR's Mass Storage Controller - quite
possibly the same board. I'll have to have a look; I've got an MSC
culled from a Tower 400 but it's not to hand at the mo (God knows *why*
I've kept it; it's of no use in my Tower 700 as that has a SCSI
controller)
cheers!
Jules
3:17 a.m.
New subject: Pictures Re: Masscomp computers?
At 12:51 PM 11/25/04 +0000, you wrote:
<http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/XMC%20disk-floppy-tape%20controller%2
The manual says that there's also a XMD controller for LARGE (ESDI?)
hard drives that only controls HDs. It uses an 8031 microcontroller and has
a large connector (34 pin?) in the top center of the card and two smaller
ones (20 pin?) on each side of it. And also a XMT card that can be used to
control up to two Pertec 1/2" tape drives. That card also uses an 8031 and
it has two large connectors on the top edge. I'm pretty sure that all three
of the cards are XYLogics cards. The interesting thing about them is that
they use I/O Parameter Blocks to communicate with them just like the Intel
MDSs do. I'm not that familar with the structure of Intel's IOPBs but this
manual has a detailed description of ones that these cards use so someone
could check them against the Intel description and see if they're the same.
If you'll post a picture of your card I'll compare it against the drawings
in the manual and see if it matches.
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 22:15 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
That sounds like a pedistal system. They also made a table top and rack
mount systems but the manual mostly talks about the pedistal systems.
OK I just finished posting some pictures of the
Masscomp machine that I
took apart. Here they are:
Thanks for those! That's very different to our machine - ours is a big
tower setup; going from memory about 10" wide, maybe 24" deep and 36"
tall. If it weren't an hour's drive away I'd go take a look at it now
and see what it has inside... In no particular order these are: (1) this
card that I can't remember
what it is <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/masscomp/unknown.jpg>.
Not much in the way of large chips on that - given that and the size of
the connectors, it suggests some sort of data aquisition again to me, or
parallel output to something...
> (6) The last card in the system (topmost) is a XMC (hard)disk/floppy/tape
> controller
>
0xylogic%20431.jpg>. I believe this actually a XYLogics 431 card.
Hmm, that looks vaguely like NCR's Mass Storage Controller - quite
possibly the same board. I'll have to have a look; I've got an MSC
culled from a Tower 400 but it's not to hand at the mo (God knows *why*
I've kept it; it's of no use in my Tower 700 as that has a SCSI
controller)
cheers!
Jules
28 Nov
28 Nov
6:59 a.m.
We've got one, with a n Eagle and some sort of tape, I think. I takes 2
cabinets, but we've never got around to playing with it, altrhough things
have been progressing well at the arehouse, so we may look into it before
long.
On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Joe R. wrote:
At 12:47 PM 11/24/04 +0000, you wrote:
--
M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
Shady Lea, Rhode Island
"Casta est quam nemo rogavit."
- Ovid
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 07:25 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
Yeap, each chassis can have up to four CPU cards. I think the dual
chasssis machines could have up to eight but I'd have to check on that.
Does anyone on this list play with the Masscomp
computers?
I'm the only person I've ever seen ask about them on here :)
They seem to be pretty much unknown. I haven't found the keyboard/mouse
yet for the one at the museum, so seeing what state it's in is a long
term project at present! It's also missing a castor, but that's the
least of the problems ;)
Andrew K. Bressen replied to me with the following info:
///
Masscomp did indeed make multi-cpu machines, and also had an os called RTU (Real Time Unix).
Yeap, I just sent that manual to Al K. I have at least three other
manuals here.
They also had another unix called, I think,
OS/32.
I don't know which one was used by the multiprocessor boxes.
I think the CPUs were mostly 68k's,
The CPU in mine is 68020. It's card looks similar to Multibus but is
longer and has different connector. (I'll post pictures later.) It plugs
into the SMI bus. There's also a Multibus chassis in them for the IO cards
AND there's also STD+ card sockets in them for data acquisition cards. STD+
is an enhancment of the regular STD bus. Some of them also had VME sockets!
The use of four different busses really surprised me.
system bus might have been multibus.
They had early successes as graphics/cad workstations,
so yes they had mice.
Some did, some didn't. Some only used termials but others had graphics
capabilities. I think mine all just used terminals.
Masscomp was bought by Concurrent,
so there used to be some info on the concurrent
users
group web pages at www.ccuruser.org. That seems gone now,
but archive.org might help you dig up some old stuff there.
There'll be lots more there soon!
I used to help run one at the Columbia U CS dept; I remember that the
ethernet card had an 80186 that the OS downloaded a network stack to.
It uses an Excelan EXOS 201 Intelligent Multibus Ethernet Controller. I
have manuals for it. One of them has already gone to Al.
I seem to recall a hardcoded 14 or 15-hop limit on
the IP stack on the
version we had, which confused us for a while when we wondered why the
machine would talk to some machines but not others.
I believe the owner of vitriol.com may still have a number of
operational or nearly-operational masscomps.
I'll check and see if they want some more. These are too neat to destroy.
Joe
///
24 Nov
24 Nov
5:53 a.m.
On Wednesday 24 November 2004 07:25, Joe R. wrote:
Does anyone on this list play with the Masscomp
computers?
I recently picked up a Masscomp 5400.
It has several eight serial ports on the back and an ethernet connection
but the keyboard and video ports were not installed.
I haven't done anything else with it.
Any thoughts on logging in?
--
Collector of vintage computers http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600
Machines to trade http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600/trade.html
Open Source Weekend http://www.osw.ca
11:05 a.m.
Mike Kenzie wrote:
On Wednesday 24 November 2004 07:25, Joe R. wrote:
Hi Mike,
If I am not mistaken, the machines I have are 5400s. They have one
serial port marked local, which is for a serial console. I don't recall
for sure, but I think 9600,n,8,1 would be a good bet. There is a switch
on the front to select graphics/local/remote. Set it to local and
restart the machine. You should get console on your terminal.
Jon
Does anyone on this list play with the Masscomp
computers?
I recently picked up a Masscomp 5400.
It has several eight serial ports on the back and an ethernet connection
but the keyboard and video ports were not installed.
I haven't done anything else with it.
Any thoughts on logging in?
11:51 a.m.
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 16:05 -0600, Jon Auringer wrote:
If I am not mistaken, the machines I have are 5400s.
Whereabouts do they display the model number? The only thing of any
significance on ours seemed to be a 'mwb515' on the back; it just says
Masscomp on the front without any model details.
ta
Jules
12:38 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 16:05 -0600, Jon Auringer wrote:
That is an excellent question. First, let me say that I was incorrect
about my machines being 5400s. As I looked at them, it struck me that
they are actually MC500s. I know this mainly because I have a manual
somewhere with a picture on the cover. I also noticed that inside one of
the front panels there was a 1984 date stamped on it. The following time
line I snatched from the Web would seem to collaborate this. I believe
that the one Masscomp that I arranged to be donated to the Rhode Island
Museum was a 5400. I believe that I still have documentation for that
system. I was planning to spend some time this weekend sorting through
my Masscomp stuff. If I find anything pertinent, I will let you know.
Jon
1981 year Establishment. Completion of design of first system MC500
1982 year First number machine MC500 shipment
From electronic product magazine most excellent annual product prize
conferment
1983 year From Industrial Research and Development council 1r100
conferment
1984 year Stock in NASDAQ presentation
1985 year Second generation series MC5000 series, total 5 type 9 model
announcement Japanese Massachusetts * computer corporation establishment
1985 year Superior type MC6000 series of MC5000 series announcement
1988 year In the United States, the concurrent * computer corporation
and the Massachusetts * computer corporation merger
If I am not mistaken, the machines I have are
5400s.
Whereabouts do they display the model number? The only thing of any
significance on ours seemed to be a 'mwb515' on the back; it just says
Masscomp on the front without any model details.
5:53 p.m.
Mine has a sticker on the back but the model number on it is totally
meaningless. I decided that it's a MC5600 based on the number of CPUs and
number of card slots and the physical description of the machine. FWIW this
one is a rack mount version and there's almost no mention of it in the
manuals except in the installation manual.
The manuals that I have are for the MC5600/5700 and MC6600/6700 series.
You may have a completely different model.
Joe
At 10:51 PM 11/24/04 +0000, you wrote:
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 16:05 -0600, Jon Auringer wrote:
If I am not mistaken, the machines I have are
5400s.
Whereabouts do they display the model number? The only thing of any
significance on ours seemed to be a 'mwb515' on the back; it just says
Masscomp on the front without any model details.
ta
Jules
27 Nov
27 Nov
8:10 a.m.
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 23:53 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
Mine has a sticker on the back but the model number
on it is totally
meaningless. I decided that it's a MC5600 based on the number of CPUs and
number of card slots and the physical description of the machine. FWIW this
one is a rack mount version and there's almost no mention of it in the
manuals except in the installation manual.
Right, I had about 5 minutes to look at our Masscomp earlier...
hopefully will have more time tomorrow.
It's got a Micropolis 8" hard disk in the base, which is something (not
much use without given we have no install media for it!). Also a QIC
tape drive and a floppy drive at the front.
Cards labelled on the edges as follows:
FPP
MEM2
APU
MEM
MPU
GPX
GPM
DSD
No Ethernet board unfortunately. FPP is presumably a floating point
board? No idea about APU. DSD I'm guessing does the floppy/tape/hard
drive?
I haven't tried/bothered pulling boards yet.
I still need to find the keyboard / mouse for it before I can justify
spending any time trying to get it running, of course (anyone have an
image of what the keyboard and mouse look like so I know what to look
for?)
cheers
Jules
28 Nov
28 Nov
3:09 a.m.
At 07:10 PM 11/27/04 +0000, you wrote:
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 23:53 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
That sounds older than mine. It has 5 1/4" hard drive and 5 1/4" floppy
drive. Any idea what interface your HD uses? It might help pin down the
interface card used.
Mine has a sticker on the back but the model
number on it is totally
meaningless. I decided that it's a MC5600 based on the number of CPUs and
number of card slots and the physical description of the machine. FWIW this
one is a rack mount version and there's almost no mention of it in the
manuals except in the installation manual.
Right, I had about 5 minutes to look at our Masscomp earlier...
hopefully will have more time tomorrow.
It's got a Micropolis 8" hard disk in the base, which is something (not
much use without given we have no install media for it!). Also a QIC
tape drive and a floppy drive at the front.
Cards labelled on the edges as follows:
FPP
Just as a guess I'd say that this is a Floating Point Processor. My
manual talks about two diffferent ones, the LFP (Lightning Floaing Point)
modules and SLFP (Super Lightnintg Floating Point) module. These meet the
IEEE 754 Floating Point Standard. The LFP is syncronous and the SLFP is
syncronous or asyncronous. FWIw there was also a VA-1 (Vector Accelerator)
module.
MEM2
below
APU
I'm guessing that this is the AFM
(Axillery Function Module). This
card in neither MB or SMI. It's used to control which CPU card boots the
system and to comunicate with it using the PIB serial port. It also has SMI
bus terminators and arbitration circuitry for the Multibus. There are at
least four types of AFM boards.
MEM
I'm guessing that this and the MEM2 are memory cards. According to the
manual they should be marked as CMM or TMM. SMI interface.
MPU
Probably the "CMPU" card. SMI CPU card with 68020 CPU. This is the same
CPU card that mine use.
GPX
Aw! Finally a card that is in my manual. The GPX is the Graphic
Processor Expansion Module. It functions solely as a slave to the GPM and
expands it's raster memoey. Each GPX adds an additional 4 planes of raster
memory and a color map. Each GPM can support 2 GPXs. These are neither MB
or SMI.
GPM
Another a card that's in my manual. The GPM is a the Graphics Processor
Module. This one is what MC referrs to as an extended height card residing
on the MB (Multibus). It preforms independent graphics processing using an
8MHz 68000.It has 128K of RAM program memory and 256k of raster memory
consisting of two independent frame buffers, organized into 2 planes,
DSD
I don't know what this is but it might stand for Drive System
(something). Check and see if it connects to the drives.
No Ethernet board unfortunately. FPP is presumably a floating point
board? No idea about APU. DSD I'm guessing does the floppy/tape/hard
drive?
That would be my guess. I don't know if your OS will support Ethernet
cards but I have plenty of them. Your system is obviously configured for
graphics whereas mine is configured for data acquisition and control.
I haven't tried/bothered pulling boards yet.
Note that the boards are >> not << marked MCPU, etc etc.
I still need to find the keyboard / mouse for it before I can justify
spending any time trying to get it running, of course (anyone have an
image of what the keyboard and mouse look like so I know what to look
for?)
I can look through the maintenance manual it should have a picture.
You should be able to boot it using a terminal. According to the manual,
when you're in the console mode press the interrupt switch and it sahould
display "Hit return to prompt". Now this is where it gets interesting. It
will not only detect which terminal you press the return on and make it the
console device but it will aslo detect how many times you press return and
set the baud rate accordingly! The exact rate depends on if you're using
TTY 0, 1, or 2. Pressing return 3 times will get you 300 baud on any of
them but other than that they all vary and according to the chart they can
still give you up to four different rates for the same port and number or
returns. But I don't understand why. Your best bet is to try it and see
what you get. You should end up with a ">>>" prompt on the terminal.
The
control codes for the console appear to be the standard ^C. ^X, ^R, ^O etc
etc. Not it said this this should happen when you're in the console mode.
there's a setting in the NVRAM that controls this but I have no idea how
you change it without the OS running. IF you were running the Unix OS you
can type "reboot -h" to change it.
Joe
cheers
Jules
24 Nov
24 Nov
12:10 p.m.
At 11:53 AM 11/24/04 -0500, Mike Kenzie wrote:
On Wednesday 24 November 2004 07:25, Joe R. wrote:
That sounds like my machines.
Does anyone on this list play with the Masscomp
computers?
I recently picked up a Masscomp 5400.
It has several eight serial ports on the back and an ethernet connection
but the keyboard and video ports were not installed.
I haven't done anything else with it.
Any thoughts on logging in?
I can dig out what the manual tells you to do it you want that.
Joe
--
Collector of vintage computers http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600
Machines to trade http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600/trade.html
Open Source Weekend http://www.osw.ca
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participants (6)
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at258＠osfn.org -
auringer＠tds.net -
bert＠brothom.nl -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
kenziem＠sympatico.ca -
rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com