23 Nov
2006
23 Nov
'06
6:58 p.m.
Referring to people's "collections" or whatever they
may be of course. In particular I'd like to see Tony
Duell's list of, what was it, 170+ machines?? This
isn't the sort of site where a database can be stored
unfortunately. I hope I'm not being too bold...
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24 Nov
24 Nov
3:46 p.m.
Referring to people's "collections" or whatever they
may be of course. In particular I'd like to see Tony
Duell's list of, what was it, 170+ machines?? This
isn't the sort of site where a database can be stored
unfortunately. I hope I'm not being too bold...
OK, here is a partial list of my collection. Not updated recently, so
some new acquisitions aren't there...
Minicomputers
-------------
DEC PDP11/05 (or is it 11/10), 8K core
DEC GT40, VR17 display, lightpen (no keyboard)
DEC PDP11/34's, MOS memory, programmers panel (3 off)
DEC PDP11/44, 768K MOS memory, FPP
DEC PDP11/45, 124K memory, Qbus expansion, RK05, RL01, RL02, RK07 (2 off
each), RX02, RK11-C, Solartron tape reader, EMI7000 magtape, etc
DEC PDP11/03, expansion box, RKV11-D
DEC PDP11/03, Lab I/O, etc
DEC MINC-03 + 2 RL01 drives, KW, DI(2), DO(2), AD, AA modules
DEC MINC-23 + RX02, KW (2), DI, DO, AD, AA, TP, AG modules
DEC SBC21 in BA11-V box (York Box PROMs + PLA)
DEC PDP8/e + TU56 + RX01 + PC04 + RK8e controller
DEC PDP8/a + RL8 + RK8 controllers
DEC VAX 11/730 + R80 + TS05 magtape.
DEC MicroVAX IIGPX
Philips P850, 2K core, Trend papertape, IEEE488 interface
Philips P851, 32K MOS, double 8" floppy drive
Philips P854, 64K MOS, double 8" floppy drive, hard disk interface
HP 2100A CPU + papertape reader + 'RK05-like' cartridge drive
Tektronix 8530 development system
Tektronix 8550 development system
Computer Automation Naked Mini (missing PSU)
Data General Nova 1210 (missing frontpanel)
Parallel Computers
------------------
AMT DAP 500 (1024 processors), PSU fault
Assorted INMOS TRAMs (Computer, SCSI, GPIB, Ethernet, etc). B004, B008, B020
INMOS ITEM (5 off B001 cards) + spares
Workstations
------------
PERQ 1, 4K CPU, 1M RAM, 24Mbyte hard disk
PERQ 2T1, 16K CPU, 2M RAM, OIO-2, Canon CX printer, V80 printer, Dylon
Magtape, Archive Sidewinder, portrait monitor
PERQ 2T4, 4M RAM, landscape monitor (with EHT fault?)
PERQ 3a, 2M RAM, 100Mbyte hard disk, mono display
Apollo DN3500 + 20Mbyte RAM + ESDI disks + spare cards.
Sun 3/260, FPA, SCSI, SMD, QIC24 tape drive (no disks)
HP 9000/340, 16Mbyte RAM, 6plane framebuffer (5 off)
HP/ Apollo 9000/425 + external graphics box + spare mainboards/CPUs
Torch XXX (3 off), slimring, quinring, mussel (68020) board, etc
WCW MG1 motherboard + Ramcards + PSU
WCW MG1, ramcards, keyboard, mouse, monitor, IBM expansion backplane.
WCW Hitech 10 motherboard + CPU boards + video boards + RAM
WCW Hitech 20 in PC tower case
Xerox Daybreak 83D + mono monitor (missing keyboard/mouse)
Acorn Cambridge Workstation
Micros - 12 bit or higher
-------------------------
IBM PC (3 off)
IBM PC/XT (2 off, 1 with expansion cabinet)
IBM PC/AT (with 486 kludgeboard,etc)
IBM PortablePC
IBM PC/jr
IBM PC/XT Model 286
AES PC/AT clone
Philips/Corona Data Systems XT clone
HP150-II touchscreenPC, 3 off hard disk units, 2 off tape drives
HP9825 + 8" drive + IEEE cartridge + RS232 cartridge etc
HP9831
HP9836, 2 drives, 1 Mbyte RAM, RS232, 2* GPIO, HPIB cards.
HP9845 + mono monitor, I/O expansion chassis, I/O modules, ROMs
HP110
HP Portable+ (2 off, one with video interface)
Apricot PC, 960K RAM, expansion cards
FTS Model 88 workstation + 2 8" floppies
Zilog S8000/30 Z8000-based unix machine
Atari 520 STFM, external drive
CBM Amiga 600 (faulty?)
Sage 2, 512K RAM, 2 drives
DEC Rainbow, RAMcard, Colorcard, HDC, VR201 monitor, LK201 keyboard (2 off)
DEC Pro350 (2 off), assorted cards (including ethernet and realtime I/O)
DEC Pro380
DECMate II, VR201, LK201
Sinclair QL, homebrew keyboard.
Sanyo MBC555, mono monitor, keyboard
Apple Macintosh Plus, keyboard, no mouse (2off)
Apple Macintosh LC, keyboard (no mouse or monitor)
Acorn A310, Monitor
Acorn A3000, mouse
IBM Risc6000 Model 220
Panasonic luggable PC
Sharp 8086 PC (not IBM compatable)
Sirius 1
Amstrad PC2086 + PC14HRCD/O monitor
Amstrad PPC640DD portable PC + TV interface
Micros - 8 bit
--------------
CBM PET 8032SK + 8050 drive + printers
CBM 64 + 1541 drive
CBM 64C
CBM 128
CBM P500 + 8250LP drive
TRS-80 Model 1 (level 2 16K RAM) + Expansion Interface (32K RAM) + drive
TRS-80 Model 1 (Model 3 basic, 48K RAM!), keyboard unit only
TRS-80 Model 3, 48K RAM, 2 drives, RS232
TRS-80 Model 4, 128K RAM, 4 internal drives, RS232
TRS-80 CoCo 2, 64K RAM (4 off)
TRS-80 CoCo 3, 512K RAM, 2 drives, RS232, Sound cartridge, etc
TRS-80 Model 100, 32K RAM
Acorn Atom (3 off), Econet, etc
Acorn System 4, 6502 CPU, 40 col VDU, 56K RAM, keyboard, 2 drives, econet
Acorn System 5, 6809 CPU, 80 col VDU, 56K RAM, non-original keyboard, 2
drives
Acorn BBC Micro (6 off), econet, 8271 FDC, etc
Acorn BBC Micro + Torch SCSI hard disk unit
Acorn BBC Micro + Aries B32 RAM board
Acorn 6502 second processor
Acorn Z80 second processor
Acorn ARM1 Evaluation System (BBC Second Processor)
Torch Graduate 8088 second processor for BBC micro
Torch Z80 card for BBC micro + ROM
Tatung Einstein
Apple ][ europlus + 4 drives + language card + 6809 + serial card etc
Apple //e
HH Tiger, 64K + 8K + 96K RAM, spare keyboard PCB, CPU only
Vectrex video game + homebrew cartridges + homebrew lightpen
HP85 (3 off) + HPIB module + RS232 module + ROM drawer + 16K RAM drawer
HP9915
HP86B(3 off) + 9121 drive (3 off) + Monitor
HP87
HP87XM
Oric 1 + spare keyboard PCB
Oric Atmos + 2 3" drives + printer
Sinclair MK14 (faulty, alas), 256 bytes RAM, homebrew I/O mods
Sinclair ZX81 + 3rd party 16K RAMpack
Sinclair Spectrum 48K
SGS Nanocomputer, keypad + spare CPU board
'PE Microcontroller' 6800 system + keypad + display + PSU
Hewart Mini-6800 + RAMcard + microprinter + PSU
Diamond word processor system + 2 8" drives
CCS S100 system + cards
CASU Super C S100 system, 64K RAM, Persci twin drive, etc
Epson QX10 + video card + monitor + keyboard + spare CPU box
Epson HX20 (5 off), cassette, TF20 floppy drive.
Epson PX4 + RAM cartridge
Epson PX8 + PF10 3.5" drive (63X03 faulty)
Atari 400 (missing keyboard),PSU
Jupiter ACE, 16K Rampack, PSU
Grundy Newbrain AD + PSU
ICL DRS20
Intel Intellec MCS8i, paper tape interface, 1702 programmer
Intel MDS800, UPP, 2 8" drives, 8080 ICE
GR Futuredata Z80 development system.
Exidy Sorcerer, S100 expansion rack
NEC PC8001, expansion unit
Olivetti M10 portable
RML380Z, 2 internal drives, Hires card, RGB output, keyboard
RML480Z, internal expansion card
Zenith Z-90 + Z87 external drive unit (hard and soft sector controllers)
Philips P5020 word processor, keyboard
Gemini Galaxy 2, keyboard, monitor
Graphics Systems
----------------
Ramtek Marquis 9460 (cardcage only), Unibus interface
Grinnel Systems PDP11 framestore
PPL Model 121 video hard disk + control
PPL PDP11 framestore, Unibus Interface, trackball
I2S Model 70/E image processor, 2 RAM crates, trackball, tablet
I2S Model 70/F4 image processor, trackball
I2S Model 75 image processor, trackball, tablet, Barco CDCT 2/51 monitor
Evans and Sutherland PS/390 image display, tablet, twidlebox, keyboard,
PAL encoder, 3D imager
HP1350 Graphics translator (2 off), HP1311A monitor
Tektronix 4006 graphics terminal
Peripherals, etc
----------------
Teletype Model ASR33, large box of spares
Data Dynamics Model 390 (ASR33)
Creed 7E
Creed 444 (missing reader drive belt), control unit.
Friden Flexowriter
Teleprinter Unit 4 (line termination unit)
Sanders 12/7 varioprinter
Sanders 700 hi-res dot matrix printer
DEC LA210 printer
DEC LA324 printer
DEC LA100 printer (4 off)
Trend HSR500P paper tape reader
Trend UDR700 reader
Facit 4070 paper tape punch (2 off)
Cipher F880E magtape drive
Facit 4028 cassette drive
Teletype KSR43 (2 off)
Elliot High Speed paper tape reader
DRI model 30 cartridge disk (2 off) + PSU
Data Dynamics 1133 paper tape punch
Teletype BPRE high speed punch (2 off)
DEC VT100 video terminal (3 off)
DEC VT105 video terminal with graph option
DEC VT55 video terminal, printer
Beehive video terminal, hebrew option
Volker-Craig model 414 terminal, APL option
Philips videotext system, keypad
Philips videotext system, QWERTY keyboard, printer (2 off)
Modem 2B (2 off)
Modem 1200A
Modem 13A
Anderson-Jacobson Acoustic coupler
HP7225 plotter (2 off)
HP7245 plotter/printer
Toyo/Sanyo colour video printer + spares
ICL Termiprinter (2 off, different versions)
Torch lightpen for the BBC micro
Trend 860 series portable terminal
Calculators/handhelds
---------------------
HP9100B (2 off), magcards
HP9815 (early version CPU board, very dead :-()
HP9815 (late version CPU board)
HP35
HP45
HP55
HP65
HP67 (2 off), cards
HP80
HP41C
HP41C (with bug 1)
HP41CV (a lot), card reader, wand, printer (printhead problems), IL module
HP41CX (3 off)
Many HP41 modules (including ZenROM, ZEEPROM), MLDL, etc
HP71B (5 off), HPIL module (5 off), 32K Ram module, Forth ROM, Maths ROM,
Datacoms ROM, Circuit ROM, Curve fitting ROM, finance ROM, 41
tranlastor ROM, Zenwand, card reader, IL printer, IL tape drive, IL disk
drive
HP75C, cards, Visicalc, I/O ROM, text formatter ROM
HP28C, RS232 output interface (homebrew)
HP48SX, IR interface (Homebrew), I2C interface (homebrew)
HP49G
HP42S
HP31E
HP32E
HP33C
HP34C
HP82163 video display interface
HP82164 RS232 interface
HP82165 GPIO interface
HP82169 HPIB interface
Novus Mathematician
Casio AL1000
Casio AL2000
Sharp PC1211, cassette interface, printer
Sharp PC1500, plotter, RS232/centronics i/f, RS232/ADC i/f, tapes (I/O
fault?)
Tandy PC4, printer, cassette interfce
Tandy PC6
Tandy PC7
Casio FX730 + Cassette Interface
Sinclair Cambridge Universal
IME Model 26 calculator
HP9810 (2 off)
HP9830 + HP9866 printer
Microwriter MW4
Microwriter Agenda
Test Equipment
--------------
Tektronix 551, K and L plugins (EHT fault?)
Tektronix 555, 1A1, 1S1, P, M, 1A5, etc
Solartron CD1400 scope, delayed timebase
Tektronix 5110 'scope (2 off), assorted plugins
Tektronix 561 'scope, 3S2, 3T2 plugins (no sampling heads)
Gould K100D logic analyser,homebrew pod
HP LogicDart
HP3421 Data Acquisition unit + HPIB interface
Tektronix 835 datacoms analyser
Trend 1/4 datacoms test set
ATE TDMS5 Teleprinter test set
'Tester Distortion and Margin' teleprinter tester
Fluke 2240 data logger, paper tape output card, hires ADC
Solartron DTU, clock, controller, interface, papertape card, keypad, etc
(2 0ff)
Solartron LM1420.2 DVM
HP5243 10MHz counter + 100MHz mixer plugin
HP5245 50MHz counter + 350MHz prescaler, time interval plugin, 3Ghz mixer
Blackburn Instruments DVM (entirely valved!)
AVO valve characteristic meter Mk4
Mullard high-speed valve tester, cards
Taylor valve tester
-tony
6:26 p.m.
--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
...a big snip...
Ok, what do you play with most? And, dear Lord, most
of this stuff has to be in storage, no? I know there's
loads of castles in England, and it sure as heck would
take one to house all that! There's a bloody small
fortune there besides.
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25 Nov
25 Nov
3:42 p.m.
--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
...a big snip...
Ok, what do you play with most? And, dear Lord, most
I can tell you first what I used least. That's the 8 bit home micros. I
do admit ot using the Acorn Cambridge Workstation from time to time
(often as 'just' a BBC micro), and I have a soft spot for TRS-80s because
my first computer was a Model 1. But I don't really use the Apple ][s or
or C64s or...
As regards what I use most, that depends... Recently I've been spending a
lot of time on HP stuff, current;y there's a 9817 in bits on the bench
(yes, I know that wasn't on the list, nor is the 9816, the 9820, or a
couple of other machines working their way onto the bench). The reason
I'm doing a bit with HPs is that there's an active HP user club in the UK
(HPCC), and it's fairly easy to get motivated to investigate these fine
machines.
Other stuff I use a lot are the PERQs, at least one PDP11, etc...
Probably after doing a bit more with HPs I'll move onto something totally
different, maybe a VAX or something.
of this stuff has to be in storage, no? I know
there's
loads of castles in England, and it sure as heck would
No, it's all packed into a normal-ish London house.... Along with a lot
of books, photographic stuff, tools, and the like.
take one to house all that! There's a bloody
small
fortune there besides.
Is there? Anything that strikes anyone as particularly rare/valuable?
-tony
4:25 p.m.
--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Is there? Anything that strikes anyone as
particularly rare/valuable?
-tony
There's so much. There has to be considerable value
there. You know if you did sell it, you could affored
an even bigger London house LOL LOL.
And you don't program. VERY surprised you don't feel
the urge to tap out even a little code. The C64 of all
things is a great platform to learn a little assembly.
And of course pc's. I could recommend some groovy
books too.
When do we get to look at some pictures of your
stash? You know I'm sure a local newspaper or magazine
would be interested in printing a piece about your
"fascination". Do you use anything modern (Pentium or
later) with any regularity?
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26 Nov
26 Nov
2:39 p.m.
--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I'd be somewhat interested to know what people consider to be the 'stars'
of that collection, given that I don't have any of the traditional
rarities (like a striaght-8, or a Lisa, or even a ZX80).
Is there? Anything that strikes anyone as
particularly rare/valuable?
-tony
There's so much. There has to be considerable value there. You know if you did sell it, you could affored
an even bigger London house LOL LOL.
Yes, but what would I put in it :-)
And you don't program. VERY surprised you
don't feel
the urge to tap out even a little code. The C64 of all
I did not say I didn't program. I said I wasn't a programmer.
Let me explain. I can write code in a doxen languages if I have to,
including several assembly languages (heck, why else would I want to have
machines with toggle-switch panels ;-)). But I don't consider myself to
be a programmer, in the sense that I don't write good, efficient, code,
and I am not going, for example, to write an operating system or a
compiler, or...
Moreover, I don't really enjoy programming. I prefer to do the hardware.
Restore it, troubleshoot it, make add-ons, etc. Yes, I'll write a program
if that's what's needed to support whatever bit of hardware I'm working
on, but that's it.
things is a great platform to learn a little assembly.
There speaks somebody who's never used a Beeb. Seriously, if I wanted to
do 6502 assembly language, I'd nse a BBC micro. There's an assembler
built into the (excellent) BASIC.
And of course pc's. I could recommend some groovy
books too.
I am not sure why anyone would consider 80x86 assembly language to be
pleasant :-)
When do we get to look at some pictures of your
stash? You know I'm sure a local newspaper or magazine
That could be a problem. Yes, I have a cmaera. Darn it, I have many
cameras. But all are film-based (I will _consider_ a digital camera when
the quality of output exceeds that from my film cameras, which include
several 5*4" large format models). I also don't have a scanner, or
anything to link it to (there don't make scanners that link to PERQs :-))
would be interested in printing a piece about your
That I doubt (based on previous expereicens in a totally different area), in
any case I'd not really want a more precise location of this stuff to be
widely known...
"fascination". Do you use anything modern
(Pentium or
later) with any regularity?
Not really. There's an (old-ish) Pentium laptop here which is used for
one thing and one thing only. Running the diagnostic program for my
father's car. But the PC I am using at the moment is the PC/AT with 486
kludgeboard on the collection list.
-tony
5:50 p.m.
I'd be somewhat interested to know what people
consider to be the 'stars'
of that collection, given that I don't have any of
the traditional
rarities (like a striaght-8, or a Lisa, or even a
ZX80).
What matters is what you find groovy. Don't matter
much what the rest of the herd thinks. Yes I do have a
couple of the kewell items, like a Lisa (busted?) and
a gorgeous Canon Cat. The Lisa I'm truly enamored
with, but I'd probably sell the Cat if I could get a
good enough price. He he.
I will look the list over again. In most cases I
didn't have a clue what any of it was! LOL
there. You
know if you did sell it, you could
affored
an even bigger London house LOL LOL.
Yes, but what would I put in it :-) There speaks somebody who's never used a Beeb.
Seriously, if I wanted to
do 6502 assembly language, I'd nse a BBC micro.
There's an assembler
built into the (excellent) BASIC.
You can still download BBC basic for pc's I believe,
and there's even a version that produces Win32
executables IIRC. The thing I like about the Commie is
the built in hardware sprites. VERY easy to program.
It's just an all around fun platform. There are others
of course.
I am not sure why anyone would consider 80x86
assembly language to be
pleasant :-)
Quite gratifying to get something running on one.
Besides I know little else :(, and not a whole lot of
that LOL LOL
When do we
get to look at some pictures of your
stash? You know I'm sure a local newspaper or
magazine
That could be a problem... Not really. There's an (old-ish) Pentium laptop
here
which is used for
one thing and one thing only. Running the diagnostic
program for my
father's car.
Ok, what kind of car is it?
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27 Nov
27 Nov
11:53 a.m.
I'd be somewhat interested to know what
people
consider to be the 'stars'
of that collection, given that I don't have any of
the traditional
rarities (like a striaght-8, or a Lisa, or even a
ZX80).
What matters is what you find groovy. Don't matter
much what the rest of the herd thinks. Yes I do have a couple of the kewell items, like a Lisa (busted?) and
a gorgeous Canon Cat. The Lisa I'm truly enamored
with, but I'd probably sell the Cat if I could get a
good enough price. He he.
A Cat is a machine I would also like, but I am not going to find one at a
price I can afford...
(That's a Canon Cat, of course. I like the other sort of cat too, the
type that wakes you up by purring, but they tend to just turn up for free
:-))
I will look the list over again. In most cases I
didn't have a clue what any of it was! LOL
Feel free to ask...
there.
You know if you did sell it, you could
affored
an even bigger London house LOL LOL.
Yes, but what would I put in it :-) You should really try to secure some of that stuff
while the getting is good. Could be most are in
collections already...
That's how I got a lot of my stuff. When I collected the PDP11s, they
were essentially worthless. I was _given_ the 11/45 with all the
printsets, etc. There wasn't really an interest in collecting computers then.
executables IIRC. The thing I like about the Commie
is
the built in hardware sprites. VERY easy to program.
It's just an all around fun platform. There are others
of course.
Amd the thing I like a about the BBC micro is the very well-designed MOS
(Machine Operating System), the standard interfaces (things like a user
port and an ADC), and so on. I guess it really comes down to what you
were exposed to first ;-)
Not really.
There's an (old-ish) Pentium laptop here
which is used for
one thing and one thing only. Running the diagnostic
program for my
father's car.
Ok, what kind of car is it?
3:49 p.m.
New subject: HP 9000s, Canon Cat, felines, etc. was Re: rogues galleries
--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Seek and ye shall find...ask and it shall be
given...or sold maybe LOL LOL. You'll never know what
is waiting out there until you start a hunting.
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I find HP9000/200 machines (things like the HP9816,
9817, etc) to be
farily interesting 68000 boxes, if only becasue they
were designed in
part as instrument controllers (something I tend to
use computers for).
And so far they don't have much collector interest
which means I can
actually afford them...
I was cleaning out the shed, and found this HP box I
brought home for no particular good reason. It says -
HP 9000 PC305, or very nearly. Is this along the line
of what you're talking about? Most of the guts are
gone unfortunately, but there is what appears to be a
CGA card (onboard 6845 or equivalent, 9pin and 1 or 2
RCA jacks on the back). Another card, can't remember.
Pretty much resembles their early Vectras. Ah that's
why I brought it home sniff.
And if anyone should have parts to complete it, ping
me. Apparently it's of the passive backplane desing,
and the cpu module, amongst other things, would exist
on a card.
A Cat is a machine I would also like, but I am not
going to find one at a
price I can afford...
Mine...$20 US. Plus shipping. Hope is not lost...
Does anyone happen to know if the Canadian gov't made
ample use of these? There's some stickers on mine to
suggest it had functioned in such a capacity. And the
dude who sent it to me was in Washington state. Really
nice guy too. It made me a little uncomfortable to
take it off of him at such a low price (that's all he
wanted!). He told me not to let him know if I ever got
substantially more for it!
(That's a Canon Cat, of course. I like the other
sort of cat too, the
type that wakes you up by purring, but they tend to
just turn up for free
:-))
Yes, I have lots of those also. Not as many as
computers though. A respectable collection
nonetheless. And yes I didn't have to look hard at all
to pad that particular collection.
umm
machinery? Got a T & LM lathe yet (not very
big
granted). Or a Drummond round bed? I want both,
but
you see there's this location problem...
Not yet.
4:32 p.m.
New subject: HP 9000s, Canon Cat, felines, etc. was Re: rogues galleries
I was cleaning out the shed, and found this HP box I
brought home for no particular good reason. It says -
HP 9000 PC305, or very nearly. Is this along the line
of what you're talking about? Most of the guts are
Not really. That sounds like a somewhat interesting PC clone -- I assume
the expansion bus is ISA
The machines I like have an expansion bus which HP termed 'DIO'. It's a
100 pin double-sided connector, same connectors (but not pinout or
signals) as the S100 bus. One odd feature is that the edge connectors are
spaced at half the pitch of the height of the connecotr brackets on the
boards (that's the bracket that holds external device connectors). So you
can put a board with an external connecotr in every other slot, the
remaining slots being for things like RAM, DMA controller, etc.
I have several machins in that line. The 9816 is built into the case of a
9" mono monitor and has 2 expansion slots. In the bottom of the machine
is a PCB with a 68000, 256K RAM, serial and HPIB ports, etc. The 9836 is
a larger desktop machine with a separate monitor that fits on to. It has
8 slots and 2 built-in 5.25" floppy drives. And the 9817 (which is all
over my bench at the moment) is an HP shoebox sized thing with a 68010 on
the mainboard and 6 slots,. 2 of those are taken up by the text and
graphics video PCBs.
-tony
4:55 p.m.
New subject: HP 9000s, Canon Cat, felines, etc. was Re: rogues galleries
--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I wouldn't be too sure. I mean it sure does sound
like a peecee, but there first real peecee was the 286
based Vectra. You're well aware of the 150's. I think
I am somewhat familiar with the 9xxx's you're
referring to. In fact I think I used them at an old
job. IIRC the very one had a 68000 (or could have been
a 68010, can't really remember).
According to your description, it may very well have
been a 9836.
Anyone have a clue as to what I have? I'm sure some
of you have to have those hard bound HP catalogs
laying around. I used to have several myself.
I suppose if it is an ISA bus, I could plug a cpu
card from a Zenith Z-148 or the like and go to town.
The AT & T 6300 was similar, but different yet, and
was 8086 based besides.
The monitor I also acquired with that HP box is a 12"
green composite with a tube that cants up or down.
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I was
cleaning out the shed, and found this HP
box I
brought home for no particular good reason. It
says -
HP 9000 PC305, or very nearly. Is this along the
line
of what you're talking about? Most of the
guts are
Not really. That sounds like a somewhat interesting
PC clone -- I assume
the expansion bus is ISA 
9:47 p.m.
New subject: HP 9000s, Canon Cat, felines, etc. was Re: rogues galleries
---snip---
Hi
I've been having fun hacking my Cat ( Canon ). It was intended
to be only an appliance machine but one can program with it as well.
There is a page on the web that says one can just use the word
"see" to decompile words but he must have had a disk that someone
typed that definition in with.
I've been slowly hacking how to decompile and I've made good
progress. Still, there is so much to dig into. My main reason is
to make a printer driver for my HP 3si.
I was just doing some searches on Jef Raskin and the Cat and found
that the Standford Library has manuals on the Forth in the Cat.
Too bad I can't just photo copy them. I do plan on taking a
day off soon and sit in their viewing room with a lot of note paper.
They also have a lot of information from Jef's records on the Mac
and Apple in general. Jef was an interesting fellow.
The Cat is one of my favorite machines.
Dwight
_________________________________________________________________
MSN Shopping has everything on your holiday list. Get expert picks by style,
age, and price. Try it!
http://shopping.msn.com/content/shp/?ctId=8000,ptnrid=176,ptnrdata=200601&a…
A Cat is a machine I would also like, but I am
not
going to find one at a
price I can afford...
Mine...$20 US. Plus shipping. Hope is not lost...
4:32 p.m.
In article <m1GoSfI-000IysC at p850ug1>,
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes:
I'd be somewhat interested to know what people
consider to be the 'stars'
of that collection, given that I don't have any of the traditional
rarities (like a striaght-8, or a Lisa, or even a ZX80).
*Anything* Evans & Sutherland is damn rare and you have some
pre-workstation era equipment which is exceedingly rare.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
28 Nov
28 Nov
3:02 p.m.
*Anything* Evans & Sutherland is damn rare and you
have some
pre-workstation era equipment which is exceedingly rare.
Oddly nobody's picked up on the I2S image processor/display systems yet.
Are they really that common? I thpught they were almost like rocking
horse manure...
-tony
4:04 p.m.
In article <m1GpByB-000IywC at p850ug1>,
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes:
I confess ignorance as to what the I2S image process/display system
even *is*. I'm largely ignorant of the graphics hardware marketplace
before 1988.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
*Anything*
Evans & Sutherland is damn rare and you have some
pre-workstation era equipment which is exceedingly rare.
Oddly nobody's picked up on the I2S image processor/display systems yet.
Are they really that common? I thpught they were almost like rocking
horse manure...
5 p.m.
In article <m1GpByB-000IywC at p850ug1>,
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes:
I confess ignorance as to what the I2S image process/display system
even *is*. I'm largely ignorant of the graphics hardware marketplace
before 1988.
Basically, they're TV-scan-rate image displays for minicomputers. I have
Unibus interfaces for mine, but the schematics also include diagrams for
DG Nova and HP2100 interfaces IIRC.
The basic idea is a number of byteplanes, each 512*512*8 bits. The
outputs of these go to (programmable) look-up tables, then to a full
adder, then to more look-up tables, then to DACs (either 3 * 8 bit or 3 *
10 bit). By careful programming of the lookup tables you can obvious add
the values in the byteplanes, subtract them (program a 2's complement
table), multiply (program log/antilog tables) and so on.
And there's more. Firstly there's a hardware histogram board which
produces a historgram of the pixel values in a byteplane (I think, maybe
the outputs of the adder), and lets the host computer read it out.
There's the 'transform ALU' which treats planes 0 and 1 as a 16 bit
accumulator, and lets you combine that with any other plane using any
function a 74181 ALU chip can perform. And there's a cursor, moveable by
a graphics tablet or trackball. And overlay bitplanes for text/labels.
I own 3 of these machines. The 70/E is in 3 rack crates (processor and 2
memory crates). It uses 4K bit DRAMs (over 3000 of them), and has a total
of 6 planes. The 74/F4 uses 16Kbit DRAMs, has 4 planes, and fits into 1
crate. The Model 75 is a later unit, using 64K DRAMs, and has some other
features like a small (empty) Multibus cage for a local CPU, and a
'transform sequener' -- a 2910 sequener chip + control store RAM which
lets toy user-microprogram the thing to do automatic sequences of operations.
Needless to say this is not a simple machine. It's many boards of fairly
simple ICs.
-tony
*Anything* Evans & Sutherland is damn rare and you have some
pre-workstation era equipment which is exceedingly rare.
Oddly nobody's picked up on the I2S image processor/display systems yet.
Are they really that common? I thpught they were almost like rocking
horse manure...
10:50 p.m.
In article <m1GpDon-000IysC at p850ug1>,
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes:
Needless to say this is not a simple machine. It's
many boards of fairly
simple ICs.
Sounds pretty sweet though! Put me in your will? ;-)
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
29 Nov
29 Nov
12:14 a.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Is there anything similar with a QBus interface, that is not going to be
impossible to find?
Gordon.
In article <m1GpByB-000IywC at p850ug1>,
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes:
I confess ignorance as to what the I2S image process/display
system
even *is*. I'm largely ignorant of the graphics hardware marketplace
before 1988.
Basically, they're TV-scan-rate image displays for minicomputers. I have
Unibus interfaces for mine, but the schematics also include diagrams for
DG Nova and HP2100 interfaces IIRC.
*Anything* Evans & Sutherland is damn rare and you have some
pre-workstation era equipment which is exceedingly rare.
Oddly nobody's picked
up on the I2S image processor/display systems yet.
Are they really that common? I thpught they were almost like rocking
horse manure...
3:28 p.m.
[I2S Image processor/display systems]
Pity you added the last clause :-). One of the options I have for mine
(but alas my schematics book is too early to cover it) is called a GPIT.
It's a 2U rack box that links the I2S host interface to a DR11-W
compatible parallel interface. And the previous owner did indeed use it
with a DRV11-W Q-bus interface.
But I suspect these machines are very hard to find now.
-tony
Basically,
they're TV-scan-rate image displays for minicomputers. I have
Unibus interfaces for mine, but the schematics also include diagrams for
DG Nova and HP2100 interfaces IIRC.
Is there anything similar with a QBus interface, that is not going to be
impossible to find? 
7:09 a.m.
On Nov 28, 2006, at 8:00 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
Oh MY. That sounds like a WHOLE LOT of fun! I'd try to talk you
out of one of those, but I fear the result would be my having even
less of a social life than I have now!
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL
I confess
ignorance as to what the I2S image process/display system
even *is*. I'm largely ignorant of the graphics hardware marketplace
before 1988.
Basically, they're TV-scan-rate image displays for minicomputers. I
have
Unibus interfaces for mine, but the schematics also include
diagrams for
DG Nova and HP2100 interfaces IIRC.
The basic idea is a number of byteplanes, each 512*512*8 bits. The
outputs of these go to (programmable) look-up tables, then to a full
adder, then to more look-up tables, then to DACs (either 3 * 8 bit
or 3 *
10 bit). By careful programming of the lookup tables you can
obvious add
the values in the byteplanes, subtract them (program a 2's complement
table), multiply (program log/antilog tables) and so on.
And there's more. Firstly there's a hardware histogram board which
produces a historgram of the pixel values in a byteplane (I think,
maybe
the outputs of the adder), and lets the host computer read it out.
There's the 'transform ALU' which treats planes 0 and 1 as a 16 bit
accumulator, and lets you combine that with any other plane using any
function a 74181 ALU chip can perform. And there's a cursor,
moveable by
a graphics tablet or trackball. And overlay bitplanes for text/labels.
I own 3 of these machines. The 70/E is in 3 rack crates (processor
and 2
memory crates). It uses 4K bit DRAMs (over 3000 of them), and has a
total
of 6 planes. The 74/F4 uses 16Kbit DRAMs, has 4 planes, and fits
into 1
crate. The Model 75 is a later unit, using 64K DRAMs, and has some
other
features like a small (empty) Multibus cage for a local CPU, and a
'transform sequener' -- a 2910 sequener chip + control store RAM which
lets toy user-microprogram the thing to do automatic sequences of
operations. 
27 Nov
27 Nov
2:29 a.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Oh come on :-) You know that some of that stuff's pretty rare. On the Acorn
front, they built maybe 50 ARM eval kits and a similar number of ACWs for
instance, and known survivors of any of the System range is probably less than
20. It's rather hard to find an Atom with the Econet board too (although stock
Atoms are reasonably common).
There can't be many DEC GT40s about, or DAPs. PERQ 2T4's aren't exactly
common, nor is anything from Whitechapel or the better Torch systems.
Ditto with Vectrexes, HH Tigers, Einsteins, and the Sinclair MK14.
Heck, even Orics / Jupiter ACEs / RML380Zs / Sorcerors aren't *that* common
these days, although they're probably around if you have money to spare.
I could go on....
Valuable? Well anything rare is valuable (as I realise that you well know) :-)
But if you mean in monetary terms, I really couldn't say. There are probably a
few things there that'd go for a few hundred pounds each on ebay - but
personally I never think of ebay as a good measure of an item's worth.
ps. No Domesday system by the way? I could have sworn that you owned one!
cheers
Jules
take one to
house all that! There's a bloody small
fortune there besides.
Is there? Anything that strikes anyone as particularly rare/valuable?
12:01 p.m.
Oh come on :-) You know that some of that stuff's
pretty rare. On the Acorn
Indeed I do :-)
front, they built maybe 50 ARM eval kits and a similar
number of ACWs for
I am supriesed it was as few as that...
instance, and known survivors of any of the System
range is probably less than
20. It's rather hard to find an Atom with the Econet board too (although stock
Atoms are reasonably common).
Thinking about it, I may have 2 Atoms with Econet. One with the official
Econet board (fitted on the solder side of the main PCB), the other
with a 'System' Exonst eurocard connected to the expansion bus.
Heck, even Orics / Jupiter ACEs / RML380Zs / Sorcerors
aren't *that* common
I am told the Oric disk drives are hard to find....
these days, although they're probably around if
you have money to spare.
I could go on....
Valuable? Well anything rare is valuable (as I realise that you well know) :-)
I am not convinced. A Tiger turned up on E-bay recently, and did not sell
for that much money.
But if you mean in monetary terms, I really
couldn't say. There are probably a
few things there that'd go for a few hundred pounds each on ebay - but
personally I never think of ebay as a good measure of an item's worth.
ps. No Domesday system by the way? I could have sworn that you owned one!
No, it's something I've not found yet...
-tony
2:13 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
I'm only going by what I'm told by ex-employees - but it is quite possible
that there's a smattering of company folklore at work there; I've never seen
hard production figures (I don't think that such things exist).
I must admit that if the run was only 50, then there are a relative lot of
survivors (I've come across around ten over the years - which probably means
there are a fair few more than that. Even a 1 in 5 survival rate would be
pretty impressive, though)
That's interesting - I wonder how people missed it? Or maybe it's just so
uncommon that not many people even know what it is.
cheers
Jules
front, they
built maybe 50 ARM eval kits and a similar number of ACWs for
I am supriesed it was as few as that... Thinking about it, I may have 2 Atoms with Econet. One
with the official
Econet board (fitted on the solder side of the main PCB), the other
with a 'System' Exonst eurocard connected to the expansion bus.
Ooh - you don't see many Atoms using the expansion bus for System cards (with
the exception of the Disc Pack).
There were actually two variants of the System Econet boards with different
circuitry and board layout (although IIRC they share the same part number!) -
unfortunately I don't have photos immediately to hand so I can check what the
differences were... (it may just be that one has collision detection circuitry
and the other doesn't, or one has a clock generator and the other doesn't)
Valuable? Well
anything rare is valuable (as I realise that you well know) :-)
I am not convinced. A Tiger turned up on E-bay recently, and did not sell
for that much money.
1:41 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Didn't come from Cambridge uni originally, did it? :-) I had two from there on
the bench just before I left for the US; both with lab interface boards
mounted in the bottom of the case. It's the first time I'd seen that actually
done, although I believe that somewhere Acorn do mention as a feature the
possibility of stuffing a System board in there...
(Annoyingly both machines originally had Econet boards fitted apparently, but
they'd long since vanished from inside...)
cheers
J.
Ooh - you
don't see many Atoms using the expansion bus for System cards (with
the exception of the Disc Pack).
I think one of my other Atoms has one of the lab I/O cards mounted
inside, connected to the system bus.
29 Nov
29 Nov
3:13 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Didn't come from Cambridge uni originally, did it? :-) I had two from there on
No, most of my Atoms, including this one, came from Reading University. I
also got the System 4 that was used as the Econet file server.
Ooh - you
don't see many Atoms using the expansion bus for System cards (with
the exception of the Disc Pack).
I think one of my other Atoms has one of the lab I/O cards mounted
inside, connected to the system bus. the bench just before I left for the US; both with lab
interface boards
mounted in the bottom of the case. It's the first time I'd seen that actually
done, although I believe that somewhere Acorn do mention as a feature the
possibility of stuffing a System board in there...
The bus pinout is identical, all you need is a length of ribbon cable
with the right connectors on the end.
-tony
7:30 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Interesting - that's basically what happened with the two Atoms I was working
on, except that they came with a System 3 rather than a 4 (also missing the
Econet board, sadly).
The System 3 cleaned up nicely and after replacing around 40% of the ICs due
to corrosion (seriously) and fixing umpteen dry joints on the keyboard it was
back in good health again - unfortunately I never got the time to work on the
Atoms, other than giving them a good spring clean.
Sure - although a lot of Atoms out there don't seem to have the expansion
connector fitted (IIRC there are typically a couple of ICs that they need
too). The Atom Disc Pack (as you probably know) was just a drive and a
System-era FDC in a single case, plugged into the Atom's expansion port).
I merely meant that it was the first time I'd actually come across anyone
who'd used a System board (other than a Disc Pack) with the Atom; it doesn't
seem like it was a popular thing for people to do at the time.
cheers
Jules
Tony Duell
wrote:
Didn't come from Cambridge uni
originally, did it? :-) I had two from there on
No, most of my Atoms, including this one, came from Reading University. I
also got the System 4 that was used as the Econet file server. Ooh - you
don't see many Atoms using the expansion bus for System cards (with
the exception of the Disc Pack).
I think one of my other Atoms has one of the lab
I/O cards mounted
inside, connected to the system bus. the bench just
before I left for the US; both with lab interface boards
mounted in the bottom of the case. It's the first time I'd seen that actually
done, although I believe that somewhere Acorn do mention as a feature the
possibility of stuffing a System board in there...
The bus pinout is identical, all you need is a length of ribbon cable
with the right connectors on the end.
-tony
--
And if eight out of ten cats all prefer whiskas
Do the other two prefer Leslie Judd?
8:19 p.m.
OK, my rogues gallery list:
Minis:
PDP-11/03, dual RL01s
VAXserver 4000/300, 3 DSSI disks, TK70, CMD SCSI
Workstations:
(4) Diser 'Eve' (upgraded Lilith) workstations
Evans & Sutherland ESV/50, fully loaded
SGI Indigo^2 R10000 Max. Impact
Sun 3/110
Sun SPARCstation 5
PCs:
Commodore CBM 8032 w/8050 disk drive
Kaypro 4
Televideo TS-803 CP/M PC (B&W graphics)
Peripherals:
AT&T Pixel Machine, fully loaded (w/Sun interface)
Evans & Sutherland Advanced Rendering System
Evans & Sutherland Freedom 1000 graphics accelerator
Evans & Sutherland Freedom 3000 graphics accelerator
Fujitsu M2444 9-track tape drive
HP1351A graphics generator
Megatek digitizing tablet
Megatek valuator (dials box)
(2) Evans & Sutherland remote data concentrators
Tektronix video hardcopy
Xylogics Annex terminal server
Serial terminals:
LA-120 printing terminal
VT-100 CRT terminal
Heath/Zenith Z-19 CRT terminal
HP2397A color graphics terminal base
HP2621A CRT terminal
HP2621P CRT terminal w/thermal printer
(2) HP2648A B&W CRT graphics terminal
Honeywell VIP7809 CRT terminal w/military shipping carrier
IBM 3180 CRT terminal
Lear-Siegler ADM-3A CRT terminal
(2) Lear-Siegler ADM-5 CRT terminal
(2) Megatek Whizzard 1645 CRT graphics terminal, 1 sans monitor
Tektronix 4010 storage tube graphics terminal
Tektronix 4014 storage tube graphics terminal
(3) Tektronix 4105A CRT color graphics terminal
(6) Tektronix 9200T CRT color graphics terminal
(8) Tektronix 9201T CRT color graphics terminal
Televideo 925 CRT terminal
(2) Televideo Personal Terminal CRT terminal
Teletype Model 43 printing terminal
Texas Instruments Silent 700 Model 707 printing terminal
Texas Instruments Silent 700 Model 745 printing terminal
Westinghouse W1643 party line CRT terminal
X terminals:
(4) NCD 16P2
NCD Xplora 401
(2) Tektronix XP217C
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
30 Nov
30 Nov
3:47 a.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Sure - although a lot of Atoms out there don't
seem to have the
expansion connector fitted (IIRC there are typically a couple of ICs
that they need too). The Atom Disc Pack (as you probably know) was just
a drive and a System-era FDC in a single case, plugged into the Atom's
expansion port).
I still have my (almost) fully-loaded Atom, salvaged from the junk pile
at my Dad's work over 20 years ago. The bottom of the case is rather
scorched where the PSU heatsink has been struggling with all those
2114s! I'm guessing that's why they wanted rid of it - it ran for about
5 minutes then would shut down because the regulators were overheating.
I remember him being rather concerned about how hot his bench PSU was
getting when running it, and eventually it clicked that if it was
pulling down 3.5A from the thing then there was no way two 7805s would
ever handle the strain.
Then, of course, the unheeded technical manual turned up. I had a quick
look, and right in the first few pages it mentions removing the
regulators and bypassing them and then putting a *BIG* label on the back
saying that it's for 5v now, not 9v...
Gordon
11:32 a.m.
On Thu, November 30, 2006 11:47, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
Then, of course, the unheeded technical manual turned
up. I had a quick
look, and right in the first few pages it mentions removing the
regulators and bypassing them and then putting a *BIG* label on the back
saying that it's for 5v now, not 9v...
My first Atom was missing that *BIG* label, but since it's working state
was unknown and I didn't have a PSU for it (or a bench one) I took it to
the bloke that helped create it - Nick Toop still lives and works in
Cambridge. We discovered a big switch underneath the keyboard that shorted
out the regulators so it could be run at either 5v or 9v.....it was set
for 5v so if I HAD powered it up with an Atom supply I'd probably have
toasted some of it.
--
adrian/witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection?
7:53 p.m.
Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
I still have my (almost) fully-loaded Atom
I was hoping that by 'fully loaded' you meant that it had the BBC BASIC,
Econet and Colour boards :-) (I've never seen a real example of the latter,
although I know that there's at least one in the UK)
at my Dad's work over 20 years ago. The bottom of
the case is rather
scorched where the PSU heatsink has been struggling with all those
2114s! I'm guessing that's why they wanted rid of it - it ran for about
5 minutes then would shut down because the regulators were overheating.
I remember him being rather concerned about how hot his bench PSU was
getting when running it, and eventually it clicked that if it was
pulling down 3.5A from the thing then there was no way two 7805s would
ever handle the strain.
You know, I have a feeling that you can get 7805 regulators that'll handle 2A
each - but maybe they weren't around when the Atom was new. Even then, just
doubling them up and hoping they'd share the load evenly was always going to
be a bit risky.
Then, of course, the unheeded technical manual turned
up. I had a quick
look, and right in the first few pages it mentions removing the
regulators and bypassing them and then putting a *BIG* label on the back
saying that it's for 5v now, not 9v...
There's a lot of Atoms out there that have had the regulators bypassed, no
sticker added, and then subsequently had 9V shoved through them :(
cheers
Jules
1 Dec
1 Dec
3:14 a.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
No, but it does have an EPROM in the extension socket labelled "TOOLKIT
ROM #A000" or something similar. I've never quite figured that one out.
I still have my (almost) fully-loaded Atom
I was hoping that by 'fully loaded' you meant that it had the BBC BASIC,
Econet and Colour boards :-) (I've never seen a real example of the
latter, although I know that there's at least one in the UK) You know, I have a feeling that you can get 7805
regulators that'll
handle 2A each - but maybe they weren't around when the Atom was new.
Even then, just doubling them up and hoping they'd share the load evenly
was always going to be a bit risky.
I did toy with the idea of replacing all its 2114s with 6264s at one
time. Now, of course, I don't think I would.
Gordon.
3:20 p.m.
Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
What does the colour board look like, and where does it fit?
I still have my (almost) fully-loaded Atom
I was hoping that by 'fully loaded' you meant that it had the BBC BASIC,
Econet and Colour boards :-) (I've never seen a real example of the latter,
although I know that there's at least one in the UK) You know, I have a feeling that you can get 7805
regulators that'll handle 2A
There's the 78S05 (2A ,in a plastic TO220 pacakge, like the plain 7805)
and the 78H05 (5A, in a metal TO3 pacakge)
There's a lot of Atoms out there that have had the
regulators bypassed, no
sticker added, and then subsequently had 9V shoved through them :(
s/through/across/
Ouch. I am sure that cooks a few ICs...
-tony
4 Dec
4 Dec
1:20 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
I can't recall what it looks like now - I've never seen the real board, and
the only photo I knew of was on the 8bs website (which has been down for many
many months now, although it will be coming back one day we're promised!)
However, from memory, the board intercepted the signals to/from the video IC
socket, and then the Atom's displaced video IC (umm, a 6847 I think) plugged
into the colour board itself. I think that the 6847 chip was colour-ready
anyway; it's just that the standard Atom doesn't include the necessary
circuitry to make use of it (I think the floating point ROM actually contains
the code to make use of the board). I also have a funny feeling that the
colour board didn't provide component RGB - it'd only allow colour via the
modulator and displayed on a TV.
All the info - including schematics / parts list / theory of operation - is in
the manual for the board; every so often I toy with the idea of building one,
but then decide that it's a lot of effort [1] for not much gain (after all,
it's not like there's a wealth of software out there which uses the board, so
I'd be limited to whatever I decided to write myself)
[1] Relatively speaking. The circuit's not complex, although I have a feeling
that some of the listed parts may be hard to find these days.
I'll dig out the manual tomorrow (I got back to the UK earlier today) if I get
the chance and flick through it for useful info... (amazingly I know which
shelf that one's on, but I'm about ready to fall over here :-)
Heh, I don't think I've ever heard of the latter one...
true :)
Gordon JC
Pearce wrote:
What does the colour board look like, and where does it fit? I still have my (almost) fully-loaded Atom
I was hoping that by 'fully loaded' you meant that it had the BBC BASIC,
Econet and Colour boards :-) (I've never seen a real example of the latter,
although I know that there's at least one in the UK) You know, I
have a feeling that you can get 7805 regulators that'll handle 2A
There's the 78S05 (2A ,in a plastic TO220 pacakge, like the plain 7805)
and the 78H05 (5A, in a metal TO3 pacakge) There's a
lot of Atoms out there that have had the regulators bypassed, no
sticker added, and then subsequently had 9V shoved through them :(
s/through/across/ Ouch. I am sure that cooks a few ICs...
Indeed. It's a shame, but then it's bad design on Acorn's part as it was
pretty obvious that relying on a sticky label being present wasn't
particularly foolproof!
cheers
Jules
2:19 p.m.
On 4/12/06 21:20, "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
I'll dig out the manual tomorrow (I got back to
the UK earlier today) if I get
the chance and flick through it for useful info... (amazingly I know which
shelf that one's on, but I'm about ready to fall over here :-)
Welcome back to Blighty! I got some goodies for you for do yer back in with,
namely the HP Spectrum Analyser and the Xerox 860 which a colleague of mine
picked up this morning and rang me up swearing because of the weight :o)
--
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?
3:54 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
I can't recall what it looks like now - I've never seen the real board, and
the only photo I knew of was on the 8bs website (which has been down for many
many months now, although it will be coming back one day we're promised!)
However, from memory, the board intercepted the signals to/from the video IC
socket, and then the Atom's displaced video IC (umm, a 6847 I think) plugged
Oh, right (and yes, the video chip is a 6847)
Gordon JC
Pearce wrote:
What does the colour board look like, and where does it fit? I still have my (almost) fully-loaded Atom
I was hoping that by 'fully loaded' you meant that it had the BBC BASIC,
Econet and Colour boards :-) (I've never seen a real example of the latter,
although I know that there's at least one in the UK) into the colour board itself. I think that the 6847
chip was colour-ready
anyway; it's just that the standard Atom doesn't include the necessary
From what I rememwebr of the 6847 datasheet, it
generates the YUV signals
for _NTSC_ colour. I guess the colour board converted
those to PAL.
circuitry to make use of it (I think the floating
point ROM actually contains
the code to make use of the board). I also have a funny feeling that the
colour board didn't provide component RGB - it'd only allow colour via the
modulator and displayed on a TV.
That is not suprising. Getting RGB froma a 6847 is a little more complicated.
-tony
27 Nov
27 Nov
3:45 p.m.
On 27/11/06 20:01, "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
S/hard/impossible
Of course, the drives were only sold in france so they still fetch a premium
over there. It's still possible to get Stratos machines but only if you've
got deep pockets.
Heck, even
Orics / Jupiter ACEs / RML380Zs / Sorcerors aren't *that* common
I am told the Oric disk drives are hard to find.... I am not convinced. A Tiger turned up on E-bay
recently, and did not sell
for that much money.
WHAT! Nobody told me about that.....bah! *sulks*
I'd love a Tiger, if only to complete my Tangerine collection. The writeup
it got in Personal Computer News sold it as a fantastic machine with its 3
CPUs......
--
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?
3:51 p.m.
--- Adrian Graham <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk>
wrote:
Of course, the drives were only sold in france so
they still fetch a premium
over there. It's still possible to get Stratos
machines but only if you've
got deep pockets.
So what do some of the starrier UK and mainland
European machines go for? Heck which are they? All I
want is a little ol' Nimbus :(. Oh and an Atari PC2.
And and...
____________________________________________________________________________________
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4:24 p.m.
So what do some of the starrier UK and mainland
European machines go for? Heck which are they? All I
Well, Some of the more interesting UK machines are :
Jupiter Ace. OK, the build quality and hardware design are horrible (thin
plastic case, rubber keyboard, bus multiplexers consisting of 3-state
outputs against normal TTL with 1k resistors in series (!)). But it's one
of the few (maybe only) home computers to have Forth rather than BASIC in ROM
RML380Z. A CP/M box built in loads of PCBs interconnected by a ribbon
cable that carries the system bus and power. How they got it to work I
don't klnow. Common in schools before the BBC micro.
Acoon BBC micro. You must know about this one...
But what about :
Acorn Cambridge Workstation. Take a BBC B+ mainboard (64K RAM). Put it in
a monitor-style case with a Microvitec Cub colour monitor chassis, a
floppy drive and a hard drive. Now add a 32016 second processor board
with 4M RAM. It can run either an a 32016 box (runs PANOS) with the Beeb
for I/O or as a normal-ish BBC micro (thrre's a swtich on the keyboard to
enable/disable the 32016).
Torch XXX. Torch started out making add-ons for the BBC micro, and it
shows in that one of the expansion buses on this machine is a cut-down
BBC 1MHz bus (hrre used for the internal modem card IRC). The other 2
buses being SCSI and VME. The XXX is a 68000 machine running unix with a
graphical frontend. Somewhat strange, it claims to be user-friendly (it
was around at the time of the first Macs), but if you're not careful you
end up at a shell prompt. The power switch is a touch swtich on the front
of the machine, when you touch it to power down the unit, it syncs the
file system then turns off the mains.
ICL PERQ AGW3300. This is a true ICL design, not a 3RCC one. It's a 68020
unix box with a graphics processor built from a pair of 29116s
-tony
2:21 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
And the Whitechapel, I'd say - OK, so it's just a Unix workstation, but there
weren't many people around at the time prepared to commit themselves to the
32000 line of CPUs.
cheers
Jules
So what do
some of the starrier UK and mainland
European machines go for? Heck which are they? All I
Well, Some of the more interesting UK machines are :
28 Nov
28 Nov
3 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
And the Whitechapel, I'd say - OK, so it's just a Unix workstation, but there
weren't many people around at the time prepared to commit themselves to the
32000 line of CPUs.
The later Whitechapel Hitec series used MIPS R2000 CPUs IIRC.
Odd machines. Theres' a motherboard with the PC/AT form factor, but the
CPU isn't on it. It actually contains serial, SCSI, ST412, floppy,
keyboard, etc interfaces. There are 8 expansion slots. 3 are 16 bit ISA,
the other 5 are DIN 41612 connectors. One takes the CPU board (which also
has MMU and some more serial ports), another takes the video board, the
remaing 3 take RAM cards.
I have one complete machine, not in an original case, but in a standard
PC/AT tower case. And quite a few spare boards in various states of
complete-ness.
Oh and a word of warning for the 32016-based MG1 Whitechapels. The
mainboard has 512K RAM, but the boot ROM needs 1.5M to boot. If it
doesn't find it, it flashes out a 'multiple bit DRAM error' on the
diagnostic LED. You then go insane trying to find a non-existant fault in
the memory, memory control, or arbitration circuitry. Please don't ask
how I found this out...
-tony
So what
do some of the starrier UK and mainland
European machines go for? Heck which are they? All I
Well, Some of the more interesting UK machines are :
1:52 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
The later Whitechapel Hitec series used MIPS R2000
CPUs IIRC.
Hmm, I've never seen a Hitec - just the MG-1 and the CG-200.
I have one complete machine, not in an original case,
but in a standard
PC/AT tower case. And quite a few spare boards in various states of
complete-ness.
Was the case based on the one used for the 32xxx machines? Or something
totally different? (Google is proving no help!)
Oh and a word of warning for the 32016-based MG1
Whitechapels. The
mainboard has 512K RAM, but the boot ROM needs 1.5M to boot.
Ha ha - that's interesting. I wonder why they did it that way? (I mean, why
put any memory on the mainboard itself if the system's always going to require
expansion boards anyway).
For some reason the MG-1 always makes me think "poor man's NeXT" :-)
cheers
J.
29 Nov
29 Nov
3:19 p.m.
[Whitechapel Hitec]
Maybe earlier boot ROMs would work with just 512K or something.
-tony
Was the case based on the one used for the 32xxx
machines? Or something
totally different? (Google is proving no help!)
I have no idea, I've never seen an original case.
But the motherboard is PC/AT form factor, with the standard 12 pin PC/AT
power connector, 8 expansion connecotors at the normal spacing, a DIN
socket for the keyboard where you'd expect it, and so on. My guess is
that they used a plain PC/AT case
Oh and a word of warning for the 32016-based MG1
Whitechapels. The
mainboard has 512K RAM, but the boot ROM needs 1.5M to boot.
Ha ha - that's interesting. I wonder why they did it that way? (I mean, why
put any memory on the mainboard itself if the system's always going to require
expansion boards anyway).
27 Nov
27 Nov
4:25 p.m.
n 27/11/06 23:51, "Chris M" <chrism3667 at
yahoo.com> wrote:
So what do some of the starrier UK and mainland
European machines go for? Heck which are they? All I
want is a little ol' Nimbus :(. Oh and an Atari PC2.
And and...
I'm sure you can fill in the etchings of the nimbus I've got with your name
on! Atari PC2 type stuff is a bit more unobtanium as far as I can see on
this side of the pond - I've only ever seen one and it's the machine I've
got, ditto PC1 and PC3.........
--
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?
5:03 p.m.
--- Adrian Graham <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk>
wrote:
I'm sure you can fill in the etchings of the
nimbus
I've got with your name
on!
Yippee!! Hurray!!! Now I have to just get up the $150
to get it here. Or send you a rubber boat and pray for
a stiff wind!
Atari PC2 type stuff is a bit more unobtanium as
far as I can see on
this side of the pond - I've only ever seen one and
it's the machine I've
got, ditto PC1 and PC3.........
The PC1 was available over here as I recall. I was
under the impression the PC2 would have been more
prevalent on that side. Maybe I got it wrong. Somebody
in Germany had one. But then that was just 1 lol.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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10:03 p.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
Chris M wrote:
So what do some of the starrier UK and mainland
European machines go for? Heck which are they?
ETH Lilith's : 2901 based machine with Modula-2 M-code as machine
language. Developed and deployed at the ETH in Switzerland, build in Utah !
ETH Ceres : 32000-based machine for Oberon development
I have yet to see one on any auction site.
Also Philips minis are rare indeed.
And then there is this C64 based laptop with a 3" floppy and a EL high
resolution flatscreen, build into a suitcase. It used an actual C64
motherboard..... ( PDC Clipper)
However somehow the rarer European machines do not seem to command a
premium when they sell. The clipper goes for less than a SX64
Jos Dreesen
10:13 p.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
And then there is this C64 based laptop with a 3"
floppy and a EL high
resolution flatscreen, build into a suitcase. It used an actual C64
motherboard..... ( PDC Clipper)
I have never heard of this. Who made it?
--
--------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ ---
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- TRUE HEADLINE: Prostitutes Appeal to Pope ----------------------------------
28 Nov
28 Nov
11:11 a.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
Cameron Kaiser wrote:
PDC, a Hamburg based startup ca. 1984
They went bust as soon as the first machines hit the market.
The machines were made by a Siemens branch in Belgium, which was
desparate for work.
The machine was in no way ready for production. Imagine a suitcase with
a C64 motherboard and around 60 wires soldered to it....
Jos Dreesen
And then there
is this C64 based laptop with a 3" floppy and a EL high
resolution flatscreen, build into a suitcase. It used an actual C64
motherboard..... ( PDC Clipper)
I have never heard of this. Who made it?
1:44 p.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
And then there is this C64 based laptop with a 3"
floppy and a EL high
resolution flatscreen, build into a suitcase. It used an actual C64
motherboard..... ( PDC Clipper)
I have never heard of this. Who made it?
2:13 p.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
--- Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> wrote:
How many of these were made? Do you have a picture?
Compared to the hernia inducing SX-64 it sounds
nicer, though. Was it
in colour?
I don't want to hear it. The quadruple hernia
inducing Texas Instruments Portable Professional
weighs 2-3x as much. I got both :). My SX is broke
though :(
Despite this, I love SX-64s and have four of them.
They make the rounds
at shows since it's easier to carry than a computer,
monitor, disk drive
and power supply.
Yep. And I'm probably the only person on planet earth
with a respectable supply of NOS picture tubes for
'em. I'd consider some groovy trades. But otherwise
NOT FOR SALE. THANK YOU VERY MUCH! I was considering
making some weird display out of 9 of them.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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29 Nov
29 Nov
11:05 a.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
Cameron Kaiser wrote:
How many of these were made? Do you have a picture?
It is the second machine on this site :
http://www.raeke-online.de/EDV/br_History.htm
I have no idea how many were made, but must seem to have originated from
the sell-off Siemens had after PDC went bust.
Compared to the hernia inducing SX-64 it sounds nicer, though. Was it
in colour?
No color flat screens existed then... It was a yellow elektroluminent
display.
Jos Dreesen
11:40 a.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
I have no idea how many were made, but must seem to
have originated from
the sell-off Siemens had after PDC went bust.
So how often do these show up on eBay? You're right, I want one of these :)
--
--------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ ---
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- TODAY'S DUMB TRUE HEADLINE: Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash Probe Told ----
10:08 p.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
Cameron Kaiser wrote:
Not often. You will have to look in Belgian and Dutch auction sites.
Prices were low, probably because nobody knows this machine.
I wonder if this will change.....
I have no idea
how many were made, but must seem to have originated from
the sell-off Siemens had after PDC went bust.
So how often do these show up on eBay? You're right, I want one of these :)
I don't. I was impressed with the EL display and not much else.
That EL display was the first usable flatscreen I ever saw.
The Clipper itself was not ready for production.
It should, at the very least, have had a proper mainboard.
W.r.t. to EL displays : I never noticed milliwatt power .
A somewhat later Sharp unit LJ640U26 ( 640x400)that I measured consumed
close to 15 Watts.
Jos Dreesen
11:38 p.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
On 30 Nov 2006 at 7:08, Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel wrote:
W.r.t. to EL displays : I never noticed milliwatt
power .
A somewhat later Sharp unit LJ640U26 ( 640x400)that I measured consumed
close to 15 Watts.
Ah, I was referring to the small (perhaps 2 cm x 3 cm) green EL night
lights--the back of one within reach is stamped "0.067 watt".
There's not enough light from one to actually illuminate anything,
but it does serve to show where the wall is when you're wandering
around in the dark...
There were high-powered ones proposed for applications such as
glowing belts for public safety workers and such, but lifetime is
limited because the phosphor tends to slowly "wear out". I remember
a text on using EL coupled with CdS photocell material for image
storage and intensification--but this was back in the 60's. I don't
know if much ever came of it.
A couple of years ago, I was talking with a Toshiba VP and was
surprised to find that he had never heard of the Toshiba plasma
display laptops.
Cheers,
Chuck
4:34 p.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
is an electroluminescent display essentially a plasma
display? IBM made this huge amber color display that
was plasma IIRC. And it was essentially a flat panel
unit.
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5:26 p.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
On 29 Nov 2006 at 16:34, Chris M wrote:
is an electroluminescent display essentially a plasma
display? IBM made this huge amber color display that
was plasma IIRC. And it was essentially a flat panel
unit.
No. EL displays use a phosphor embedded in a plastic substrate
between two electrodes, one of which is transparent. Excited with an
AC voltage, the phosphor will glow. You can sometimes find EL "night
lights" that glow a soft green. Power consumption is in the
milliwatt range.
Cheers,
Chuck
30 Nov
30 Nov
6:11 a.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
On Nov 29, 2006, at 7:34 PM, Chris M wrote:
is an electroluminescent display essentially a plasma
display? IBM made this huge amber color display that
was plasma IIRC. And it was essentially a flat panel
unit.
No...EL uses electrons to excite a phosphorescent material, while
plasma uses...well, plasma! ;) Similar to the way a neon lamp works.
I have one of those displays you're talking about; the 3290. It
is gorgeous. I made some progress on getting what I need to make it
useful, but then house sale/house purchase stuff started picking up
and I haven't been able to make any more progress on it. Soon, I hope.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL
28 Nov
28 Nov
1:01 p.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
And then there is this C64 based laptop with a 3"
floppy and a EL high
resolution flatscreen, build into a suitcase. It used an actual C64
motherboard..... ( PDC Clipper)
3"?
or 3.5"?
a european machine could be either.
Along similar lines, back in the USA, Elcompco built TRS80s, then IBM
5150s, into Halliburton attache cases, along with 5"-8" monitors, drives,
etc.
Adam Osborn drank a glass of our champagne at our Computer Faire booth
and admired the machine, a few hours before announcing that his machine
was the first ever portable microcomputer. (Even if he didn't take the
Elcompco machine seriously, what about the IBM 5100?)
1:31 p.m.
New subject: PDC Clipper vs SX-64 (was Re: rogues / Rare european machines)
On 28 Nov 2006 at 13:01, Fred Cisin wrote:
Adam Osborn drank a glass of our champagne at our
Computer Faire booth
and admired the machine, a few hours before announcing that his machine
was the first ever portable microcomputer. (Even if he didn't take the
Elcompco machine seriously, what about the IBM 5100?)
The first time I saw an Osborne I was as a bunch of parts scattered
across a tabletop at Sorcim. I had no idea of what they were going
to put the electronics in, though I complained immediately about the
small CRT.
Cheers,
Chuck
27 Nov
27 Nov
10:20 p.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
In article <456BD13D.7090802 at bluewin.ch>,
Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel <jos.mar at bluewin.ch> writes:
ETH Lilith's : 2901 based machine with Modula-2
M-code as machine
language. Developed and deployed at the ETH in Switzerland, build in Utah !
Got 3 of 'em with a bunch of spare boards in a 4th... I wouldn't mind
having more information on them, I don't have the right monitor and
keyboard for it.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
28 Nov
28 Nov
12:28 a.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel wrote:
Chris M wrote:
Just curious, where do NorskData minis fit in this?:
How prevalent were they in the European marketplace compared to, for
example, PDP-11s?
Were they not used much in Britain (why doesn't Tony have any)?, more
popular on the continent perhaps?
Never see them here in Canada. I recall seeing a bank of (some model) in the
beam-control room at CERN, in 1985, but I don't know whether that was an
indication of their popularity/success or part of a bureacratic mandate to
spread the purchasing money around to member countries.
And what about Siemens? I have a perhaps incorrect impression of them making
business mainframes (370-plug-compatible?), but did Siemens make a
'general purpose' mini?
So what do some of the starrier UK and mainland
European machines go for? Heck which are they?
ETH Lilith's : 2901 based machine with Modula-2 M-code as machine
language. Developed and deployed at the ETH in Switzerland, build in Utah !
ETH Ceres : 32000-based machine for Oberon development
I have yet to see one on any auction site.
Also Philips minis are rare indeed.
8:06 a.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
I'm surprised that no mention has been made of the Soviet-era
machines as being collectible. I seem to recall that Bulgaria was a
center of Iron Curtain big iron production at one time.
--Chuck
4:47 a.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
Chuck Guzis wrote:
I'm surprised that no mention has been made of the
Soviet-era
machines as being collectible. I seem to recall that Bulgaria was a
center of Iron Curtain big iron production at one time.
Does much of the big stuff survive intact - and if it does, is there enough
supporting documentation and software around to make it interesting for the
private collector, though?
I have no idea what the actual status is, but my guess would be that most big
old machines were scrapped for useful parts long ago - and that of any
survivors there are so few that there's just no knowledge left in order to
restore them back to health (assuming that software even exists)
--
And if eight out of ten cats all prefer whiskas
Do the other two prefer Leslie Judd?
10:24 a.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
In article <456C2FCE.4000102 at yahoo.co.uk>,
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
Chuck Guzis wrote:
I'm surprised that no mention has been made
of the Soviet-era
machines as being collectible. I seem to recall that Bulgaria was a
center of Iron Curtain big iron production at one time.
Does much of the big stuff survive intact - and if it does, is there enough
supporting documentation and software around to make it interesting for the
private collector, though? From browsing around sites of European collectors it
appears that some
of this stuff has survived. Fortunately, since they are things
like
PDP-11 clones you don't necessarily need docs for them specifically;
the PDP-11 doc sets will get you by. At least that's what I
understand from reading about it. It might be a little different when
you saw the machines in the flesh. However, since their goal was to
essentially rip-off successful western designs, it would be rather
moot if they weren't software compatible so that they could steal the
software as well. So I'm guessing that the hardware is pretty much a
straight clone.
I have no idea what the actual status is, but my guess
would be that most big
old machines were scrapped for useful parts long ago - [...]
You'd be surprised what happens in an inefficient market like the
former eastern bloc countries. I saw an episode of Modern Marvels
where NASA was using a number of Soviet era rocket engines from the
early 60s. An engineer on the Soviet project had sequestered them in
a warehouse for 40+ years instead of destroying them as ordered at the
time. My feeling is that the older stuff has more of a chance
surviving in inefficient markets than in efficient market economies.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
2:18 p.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
On 11/29/06, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
I'm surprised that no mention has been made of the
Soviet-era
machines as being collectible. I seem to recall that Bulgaria was a
center of Iron Curtain big iron production at one time.
I would be overjoyed to see an Elektronika PDP-11 clone or some such,
but unless you are Hans and have access to boot sales in the former
East Germany, those items just don't appear that often.
-ethan
2:33 p.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
In article <f4eb766f0611281418g79da7ae2ra2595e2ee3e1192d at mail.gmail.com>,
"Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> writes:
I would be overjoyed to see an Elektronika PDP-11
clone or some such,
but unless you are Hans and have access to boot sales in the former
East Germany, those items just don't appear that often.
By "boot sales" you mean electronic flea market type things?
Or are you referring to sales of goods of questionable origin as in
selling stolen goods from the boot (trunk for us Yanks) of a car?
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
3:38 p.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
On 11/29/06, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
By "boot sales" you mean electronic flea
market type things?
Yes.
Or are you referring to sales of goods of questionable
origin as in
selling stolen goods from the boot (trunk for us Yanks) of a car?
No.
-ethan
29 Nov
29 Nov
4:26 p.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
Ethan Dicks wrote:
I would be overjoyed to see an Elektronika PDP-11 clone or some such,
but unless you are Hans and have access to boot sales in the former
East Germany, those items just don't appear that often.
-ethan
I have a pretty much complete Elektronica-85, which is a clone of the DEC
Pro 350. I think the PSU may be bad, but I haven't had really anytime to
play with it! I was in contact with someone overseas (Ukraine) who had
some schematics for the 85, but I've since lost contact.
Side by side with a 350 it's a pretty remarkable copy!. It has two RX33 type
H/H floppies, and a Soviet made 10 or 20MB Winchester Disk, aka RD50.
Instead of the DEC beige, it has a sort of a silver color I like to
refer as
sputnik Grey.
The workmanship is OK but the materials are far below western standards,
the plastic housing is several mm thinner than the American version,
causing the machine to actually bend/flex a bit when picking it up or
moving it!!
Cheers
Tom
2 Dec
2 Dec
4:57 p.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 00:28 -0800, Brent Hilpert wrote:
Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel wrote:
Well, OK, here goes my second Norwegian tech company history rant mail
today. :) Please ask if there was anything I omitted.
ND was founded in 1968, grew faster than Apple did for several years,
suddenly stopped growing in 1987, went bankrupt in 1992, and the stock
was priced at 0 in 1993. Had 4500 employees at its peak.
Interesting innovations which I cannot pinpoint having been done
anywhere else:
1968: First minicomputer with hardware floating point standard?
1969: First minicomputer with paging? (optional)
1973: First superminicomputer? (NORD-5)
1979: First single-board 16-bit minicomputer? (NORD-100)
I'm sure there are a lot more, but it's 2am, and those are the ones that
spring to a tired mind.
The seed for ND was sown in the NDRE, Norwegian Defence Research
Establishment. There, the SAM and SAM 2 (Which gained the nickname
"FLINK" - roughly translatable to "dilligent") computers were
developed
by an ambitious gang of engineers. After the SAM 2 was completed, they
decided to start their own computer company. Many of the designers had
spent time at MIT, and the SAM shows clear inheritance from the PDP-1
and Whirlwind computers. This was to fade away as you progressed to the
NORD-1, however.
I myself have four ND's. One of them is one of their Motorola 88Ks,
however. The one to the far left is on 24-7, fighting a winning battle
with the winter cold. *With the window open.* Accounts to any SINTRAN
nostalgics that may be about are certainly available (Though you'll have
to telnet through my PDP-11!).
http://toresbe.at.ifi.uio.no/fourcompacts.jpeg
Chris M wrote:
> So what do some of the starrier UK and mainland
> European machines go for? Heck which are they?
Just curious, where do NorskData minis fit in this?: How prevalent were they in the European marketplace
compared to, for
example, PDP-11s?
Not extremely. The PDP-11s dwarfed Norsk Data in many areas, but Norsk
Data had a very respectable market share with their modular, integrated
office automation system NOTIS, and the NORTEXT integrated typesetting
system was extremely popular. Their SIBAS II databases were also neato.
These three systems were often combined together with rather neat
results - one would input an advertisement in NOTIS-WP, store it in the
ADBAS database, have the typesetting system typeset it, and use the
report generator NOTIS-RG to automatically charge for the
advertisements, for example. Later in the eighties, their Technostation
CAD workstation would also gain a very large market share.
They also had substantial sales to the Soviet Union, due to some rather
silly behaviour on the side of CoCom - their machines were allowed in,
even though they dwarfed the banned VAXen in performance!
Were they not used much in Britain (why doesn't
Tony have any)?, more
popular on the continent perhaps?
I don't know why Tony doesn't have one. They *were* quite common, though
possibly less so in Britain than other countries.
Never see them here in Canada.
A Canadian in the #classiccmp IRC channel passed up a ND-500 a while
ago. They tend to surface in surprising places. Last I heard, the US and
Israeli air force still actively use them as an F-16 flight simulator.
Norway might too.
I recall seeing a bank of (some model) in the
beam-control room at CERN, in 1985,
I think I have may have a picture of that room somewhere in a marketing
brochure. Was there a voltage control console with a graphics CRT
outside of the room? They were the orange generation of machines, right?
(NORD-10, NORD-50, NORD-10/S)
but I don't know whether that was an
indication of their popularity/success or part of a bureacratic mandate to
spread the purchasing money around to member countries.
CERN had an excellent relationship with Norsk Data. In fact, Tim
Berners-Lee wrote his first prototype of the WWW concept, ENQUIRE,
(which was more like a wiki, really) on a SINTRAN ND-500! The story
behind the first delivery is quite funny, IMHO.
This all got started in 1972. Norsk Data was founded in 1968, and was
still quite a small company at this time. Back then, CERN put out a
tender for the control/acquisition computers for the Synchroton
accelerator. 88 companies replied, including DEC and those giants,
and... Norsk Data. There circulate many stories from the early days, but
these are from credible sources.
CERN representatives were invited for dinner and a demonstration of the
technology. On the way from the airport, the CERN representatives
debated whether or not to accept their invitation to dinner, so as to
not completely drain the company of money! :) The representatives were
confident that they would give the contract to DEC, and felt like they
were freeloading.
The representatives were seated next to a teletype, and shown a
demonstration of timesharing (Developed by Swedish American Bo
Lewendal), BASIC compiler, FORTRAN compiler, file system, floating point
performance, etc. After around 30 minutes one of the representatives
interrupted - saying that they knew how remote mainframe timesharing
worked, but would rather like to see what their minicomputers could do.
The representatives refused to believe that the minicomputer next to the
teletype had been performing these operations, and had to be shown the
lead going into the machine!
During that demonstration and later dinner conversations, the
representatives grew certain that this was the right system for the job.
The price was the lowest reply to the tender which could feasibly
deliver. Once they got back and announced their intention to use Norsk
Data, all hell broke loose - they'd given the tender to a tiny Norwegian
company which didn't even have a working machine yet! The French embassy
told CERN that when Norsk Data failed to deliver the order, they would
be more than welcome back to Bull.
They had sold CERN a machine which did not yet exist anywhere but on
paper, the NORD-10. Reverse-compatible with the NORD-1 they had been
shown, it was to be a far more compact design. The logic diagrams were
done, and so were most of the microcode. The delivery was made on time -
of an empty rack! They had delivered the first machine, and a couple of
weeks later Harald Eide discreetly came in with a box full of cards, the
solder on which had barely dried. There was no time to debug the cards -
all of this was done on location, using a NORD-1 to spoonfeed the
NORD-10 microcode via an "umbilical cord". When the machine was finally
working, you could barely see the boards for all the wires and tape. But
the delivery was accepted.
The later machines were driven down by car, by B?rd S?rbye, Rolf Sk?r,
and Trygve Matre. In the back of BS's Renault 4 was a disk drive, TMA
had a couple of teletypes in the back, and RS had his car so full of
cards he could barely see out. Their cars were stopped by customs at the
border - and they almost didn't get out!
The CERN contract was Norsk Data's breakthrough contract, and solidified
their credibility, both nationally and internationally.
I've translated the Norsk Data history page written by Jonny Oddene, an
ex-ND nostalgic, and I'm working on a more thorough one of my own.
http://toresbe.at.ifi.uio.no/nd/history.html
Here is the story of my own ND-100...
http://toresbe.at.ifi.uio.no/nd/nd100/
WHEW. Hope I didn't bore y'all.
rgds,
-Tore
4 Dec
4 Dec
1:01 a.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
Tore, thanks for your extensive reply about Norsk Data and the story about the
CERN machines. I like hearing about the other minicomputers/companies - the
'rest of the world' - in addition to DEC and HP all the time.
Tore Sinding Bekkedal wrote:
Brent Hilpert wrote:
I was actually working in another area of the site (DD) and saw that control room
just once - I don't remember what was outside it. A co-worker took me through
to show me an earlier project she had been working on, which involved programming
the ND machines.
Yes, indeed(!), they were of the orange generation: even in the dim lighting and
off to one side, the bank of them rather determined the colour scheme for the
room. ('SCREAMING ORANGE' as you said in an earlier message. Orange panels with
aluminum trim, IIRC.)
They were from the 70's after all: the era of DEC purple, kitchen appliances
in harvest-gold and avocado-green (for North Americans), and too many other
design crimes. (Then again, this blue iMac in front of me may look horribly
kitschy/garrish in another 20 years.)
I recall seeing a bank of (some model) in the
beam-control room at CERN, in 1985,
I think I have may have a picture of that room somewhere in a marketing
brochure. Was there a voltage control console with a graphics CRT
outside of the room? They were the orange generation of machines, right?
(NORD-10, NORD-50, NORD-10/S)
3:39 a.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
Brent Hilpert wrote:
They were from the 70's after all: the era of DEC
purple, kitchen appliances
in harvest-gold and avocado-green (for North Americans), and too many other
design crimes. (Then again, this blue iMac in front of me may look horribly
kitschy/garrish in another 20 years.)
you don't think it does already? ;-)
Gordon
6 Dec
6 Dec
5:37 a.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
On Mon, 2006-12-04 at 01:01 -0800, Brent Hilpert wrote:
Tore, thanks for your extensive reply about Norsk Data
and the story about the
CERN machines. I like hearing about the other minicomputers/companies - the
'rest of the world' - in addition to DEC and HP all the time.
It's a pleasure. Even here in Norway, too few people know about the
company and their machines, which I think is a real shame. AFAICT, all
Norwegian universities were heavily DEC, perhaps Oslo most of all (with
a DEC-10 or three) - and NORDs were mostly delegated to working as RJE
stations and text processing systems. CERN really was the only major
research institution to adopt them to the degree they did. ND quickly
shifted their focus towards business applications from the original
academic market, though the ND-500 was originally designed as a purely
scientific CPU!
One thing I forgot to mention is that one of the first three NORD-10
machines to be sold to CERN (and thus one of the first three NORD-10
sold), recently surfaced in a *barn* in Gjerdrum, not too far away from
Oslo (but still agricultural territory), and we are currently in the
process of restoring it.
Yes, indeed(!), they were of the orange generation:
even in the dim lighting and
off to one side, the bank of them rather determined the colour scheme for the
room. ('SCREAMING ORANGE' as you said in an earlier message. Orange panels with
aluminum trim, IIRC.)
Yes. In fact CERN mounted handles on the panels, which certainly makes
the job of removing the panels a lot easier.
They were from the 70's after all: the era of DEC
purple, kitchen appliances
in harvest-gold and avocado-green (for North Americans), and too many other
design crimes. (Then again, this blue iMac in front of me may look horribly
kitschy/garrish in another 20 years.)
You know, I love it. Anything but mindless good taste. At least they
look interesting, and diverse - much like their innards! The fascinating
differences between all these machines is a major part of what attracts
me to this hobby. Norsk Data machines didn't turn gray until around
1987, and that's when things started going downhill. However, as much as
I'd like to claim causality... :)
-Tore
28 Nov
28 Nov
10:40 a.m.
New subject: rogues / Rare european machines
Hi,
Jos Dreesen said:
ETH Ceres : 32000-based machine for Oberon development
I have yet to see one on any auction site.
If one of those turns up, you'll have to fight me for it :-)
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com
The future was never like this!
27 Nov
27 Nov
4:14 p.m.
On 27/11/06 20:01, "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
S/hard/impossible
Of course, the drives were only sold in france so they still fetch a premium
I haev an idea mine a prototype English ones....
Heck,
even Orics / Jupiter ACEs / RML380Zs / Sorcerors aren't *that* common
I am told the Oric disk drives are hard to find.... over there. It's still possible to get Stratos
machines but only if you've
got deep pockets.
Oh well....
I am not convinced. A Tiger turned up on E-bay
recently, and did not sell
for that much money.
WHAT! Nobody told me about that.....bah! *sulks*
I'd love a Tiger, if only to complete my Tangerine collection. The writeup
it got in Personal Computer News sold it as a fantastic machine with its 3
CPUs......
It's certainly an interesting design. I'd love to find the disk
controller (or at least a scheamtic of it) for mine -- all the ROM I have
does is ask for a boot disk (presumanly CP/M).
3 CPUs is a bit of an overstatement. There is a Z80 in there for user
programs. And a 6809 for I/O (!), the former with 64K RAM, the latter
with 8K IIRC. The last 'CPU' is an NEC 7220 graphics chip with 96K video
RAM. 3 bitplanes, there's no text mode IIRC.
-tony
1:53 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Out of interest, were there many manufacturers who sold a system with three
different CPUs as standard? There were a few around with two, I know...
(Torch came close, I suppose, but as they didn't make the BBC side of their
systems themselves I'm not sure that they count!)
cheers
Jules
On 27/11/06
20:01, "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[HH Tiger]
3 CPUs is a bit of an overstatement. There is a Z80 in there for user
programs. And a 6809 for I/O (!), the former with 64K RAM, the latter
with 8K IIRC. The last 'CPU' is an NEC 7220 graphics chip with 96K video
RAM. 3 bitplanes, there's no text mode IIRC.
7:06 p.m.
On 27 Nov 2006 at 15:53, Jules Richardson wrote:
Out of interest, were there many manufacturers who
sold a system with three
different CPUs as standard? There were a few around with two, I know...
I suppose it depends on how you count "CPUs". Any system with a hard
drive has at least two and probably threeCPUs; make that SCSI and
the tally goes up to four. Add a tape drive or laser printer...
Heck, even my ancient Durango has two CPUs in the base confiugration--
both 8085s. (one to run the printer).
Given that the C64 used a 6502 CPU in the disk drive, I wonder what
collection of peripherals would give 3 CPUs there.
Cheers,
Chuck
8:10 p.m.
Given that the C64 used a 6502 CPU in the disk drive,
I wonder what
collection of peripherals would give 3 CPUs there.
You could just use a 128D: 6502 (disk drive), 8502 (main CPU 1), Z80
(main CPU 2).
--
--------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ ---
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- Success can eliminate as many options as failure. -- Tom Robbins -----------
8:49 p.m.
On 11/28/06, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 27 Nov 2006 at 15:53, Jules Richardson wrote:
> Out of interest, were there many manufacturers who sold a system with three
> different CPUs as standard? There were a few around with two, I know...
Three CPUs makes me think of the OSI Challenger III - 6502, 6800, and Z-80.
Given that the C64 used a 6502 CPU in the disk drive,
I wonder what
collection of peripherals would give 3 CPUs there.
That distinction could earlier go to a PET w/dual floppy - 1 6502 in
the PET, 2 6504s in a 2040/3040/4040 diskette drive.
The Commodore 1541 (standard drive with the C-64) only has one 6502.
You'd need to add a printer or a second disk drive (or a CP/M cart) to
get the whole system up to 3 CPUs.
-ethan
9:27 p.m.
In article <456B373E.27518.1049353 at cclist.sydex.com>,
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
CBM 8032 with the CBM 8050 disk drive gets you 3 6502s :-)
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
On 27 Nov 2006 at 15:53, Jules Richardson wrote:
> Out of interest, were there many manufacturers who sold a system with three
different CPUs
as standard? There were a few around with two, I know...
I suppose it depends on how you count "CPUs". Any system with a hard
drive has at least two and probably threeCPUs; make that SCSI and
the tally goes up to four. Add a tape drive or laser printer... 
7:54 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Out of interest, were there many manufacturers who
sold a system with
three different CPUs as standard? There were a few around with two, I
know...
But what with different CPU's could you run? Looking back in hind sight
the only OS out there was CP/M for the 8080. All the rest just seemed
to have BASIC in ROM and some way of saveing programs.
(Torch came close, I suppose, but as they didn't
make the BBC side of
their systems themselves I'm not sure that they count!)
I know somebody had planned a 6100 for use as CPU board but I forgot
who. That reminds me now that I got a PDP-8 clone I am going have to
learn how to use it. So what is the best way to learn OS/8? I still
can't get over how many features this has considering the size of the
PDP-8 for memory.
cheers
Jules.
8:30 p.m.
On Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:54:02 -0700, woodelf wrote:
Jules Richardson wrote:
> Out of interest, were there many manufacturers who
sold a system with
> three different CPUs as standard? There were a few around with two, I
> know...
The intel MDS 800 development system ran a DOS called ISIS that was not CP/M long before
MSDOS !
I was codeing in PL/M using ISIS for a target system running the RMX OS long before MSDOS
was even a
dream.
see. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMX
The intel MDS 800 development system ran a DOS called ISIS that was the OS that shipped
from Intel with the
first multibus 8080 system.
Century Computer ported the MDBS operatering system from the IBM System 1 to 8086 opt code
in 1978/79
It was used in several applications.
till later
Bob
9:23 p.m.
From: "Bob" <caveguy at sbcglobal.net>
Hi
The series II had a 8041 to interface to the keyboard, a 8085 for
_________________________________________________________________
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Jules Richardson wrote:
> Out of interest, were there many
manufacturers who sold a system with
> three different CPUs as standard? There were a few around with two, I
> know...
The intel MDS 800 development system ran a DOS called ISIS that was not
CP/M long before MSDOS !
9:31 p.m.
From: "dwight elvey" <dkelvey at
hotmail.com>
Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic
Posts"<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: rogues galleries
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 21:23:10 -0800
Oops! I
shouldn't let my 2 year old help write messages.
8085 for the IOC processor, 3000 series bitslice for disk controller and
8080 or 8085 or 8086 for the main processor.
Dwight
_________________________________________________________________
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From: "Bob" <caveguy at
sbcglobal.net>
Hi
The series II had a 8041 to interface to the keyboard, a 8085 for
_________________________________________________________________ Jules Richardson wrote:
> Out of interest, were there many
manufacturers who sold a system with
> three different CPUs as standard? There were a few around with two, I
> know...
The intel MDS 800 development system ran a DOS called ISIS that was not
CP/M long before MSDOS !
9:44 p.m.
On 27 Nov 2006 at 23:30, Bob wrote:
Century Computer ported the MDBS operatering system
from the IBM System 1 to 8086 opt code in 1978/79
It was used in several applications.
Running the MDS-800 ISIS-II version of Intel's 80-to-86 assembly
language source translation software was, IIRC, almost painful in its
slowness. I tossed a 3000 line ASM80 file on it and it ran all night
and finally died the next morning.
We discovered that hand-translating 8080 to 8086 was much more space-
efficient and actually faster.
Cheers,
Chuck
28 Nov
28 Nov
1:16 a.m.
woodelf wrote:
Jules Richardson wrote:
Yes, generally you're right I think in that there wasn't much OS-level
software around; but that doesn't mean to say that there weren't lots of
applications (and games!) floating about.
DOS (in its Microsoft and IBM flavours) must have been reasonably common by
the mid 80s.
I'm sure that by the mid-80s lots of manufacturers had OSes specific to their
hardware, too (e.g. PanOS and Brazil* in the Acorn world)
* Although the latter was more of a program loader / debugger than a full OS.
Out of interest, were there many manufacturers
who sold a system with
three different CPUs as standard? There were a few around with two, I
know...
But what with different CPU's could you run? Looking back in hind sight
the only OS out there was CP/M for the 8080. All the rest just seemed
to have BASIC in ROM and some way of saveing programs. I know somebody had planned a 6100 for use as CPU
board but I forgot
who. That reminds me now that I got a PDP-8 clone I am going have to
learn how to use it. So what is the best way to learn OS/8? I still
can't get over how many features this has considering the size of the
PDP-8 for memory.
Someone else can answer that one :) (I don't know why, but my eyes glaze over
when it comes to DEC stuff even though I can't think why it shouldn't be
interesting to me)
cheers
J.
11:17 a.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
if you all are going to cheat like crazy, then I'm
going to submit the Dimension 68000. No it wasn't
loaded as stock with FOUR cpu's, but they were
"intended" as optional equipment - 68000 running CP/M
68K, 8088 for MS-DOS, 6502 for Apple DOS, and a Z80
for CP/M. So there.
And along those lines, how about an IBM PC/XT with 4
PGA cards (each one took up 2 slots and had an onboard
8088). You'd then have a computer w/FIVE CPU's, not
even counting the ones on the keyboard or floppies or
whatever (well you couldn't actually utilize a floppy
with a system configured as such, but who cares LOL).
If you could hack each of those cards (or 3 of them,
chances are you'd want some sort of output), you'd
have one mondo cool multiprocessing box. Better yet
just hook a dumb terminal and you could work all 5.
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6:35 a.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
Chris M wrote:
if you all are going to cheat like crazy, then
I'm
going to submit the Dimension 68000. No it wasn't
loaded as stock with FOUR cpu's, but they were
"intended" as optional equipment - 68000 running CP/M
68K, 8088 for MS-DOS, 6502 for Apple DOS, and a Z80
for CP/M. So there.
Actually, I'm not sure if that should count or not... it's certainly closer to
qualifying than something which just happened to have CPUs as peripheral
processors. I suppose it depends on how "optional" they were and how much
additional circuitry was needed to support them.
And along those lines, how about an IBM PC/XT with 4
PGA cards (each one took up 2 slots and had an onboard
8088). You'd then have a computer w/FIVE CPU's
Ahh, I was originally asking after systems with different CPUs though, not
several of the same type - mainly to rule out lots of posts about parallel
machines (as I was curious as to how many manufacturers managed to make a go
of selling 'average' systems with a mixture of CPU types - parallel machines
tend to be in a different league)
12:05 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
--- Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
Chris M wrote:
Maybe more so then I even thought. If you're not
familiar with it, the Dimension 68000 tried to be all
things to all people. Surely not an unobtainable goal,
there have been numerous add-on cards for other
machines that worked well, but the "emulation" aspects
didn't work out so well (I'm told). It probably took
more resources then they could muster at the time, or
just more time. Mindcraft I think was the company
IIRC. I have one reserved for me by someone, but I'm
trying to raise the capitol to secure several more
boxes (albeit not working) to distribute to the masses
when the time is right. Truly a unique uh platform as
far as I can tell.
Was curious if there was anything like it across the
pond. Or did I ask this already...
The 68k portion worked quite well though. If you
google it you'll find there was a few at work at JPL
back in the day.
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if you all are going to cheat like crazy, then
I'm
going to submit the Dimension 68000. No it wasn't
loaded as stock with FOUR cpu's, but they were
"intended" as optional equipment - 68000 running
CP/M
68K, 8088 for MS-DOS, 6502 for Apple DOS, and a
Z80
for CP/M. So there.
Actually, I'm not sure if that should count or
not... it's certainly closer to
qualifying than something which just happened to
have CPUs as peripheral
processors. I suppose it depends on how "optional"
they were and how much
additional circuitry was needed to support them.
1:43 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
Chris M wrote:
[Dimension 68000]
Was curious if there was anything like it across the
pond. Or did I ask this already...
Closest thing is probably the humble BBC micro, to be honest. Acorn designed
them from the outset to allow add-on processors to be used (externally on the
model B, and either externally or internally with the later Master series),
and for the second processor to be able to take over control of the host BBC.
They always had plans for Z80 and additional 6502 boards for the machines; I
believe that the 32016 and 80186 boards weren't envisaged until later on.
Several manufacturers (including Acorn) made coprocessor boards for the
machines (notional OS in brackets, although you were free to run what you
wanted really):
Acorn Z80 (CP/M)
Acorn 6502 (application-level code)
Acorn 65C102 (application-level code)
Acorn 32016 (Master internal, PanOS)
Acorn 32016 (1MB variant, PanOS)
Acorn 32016 (4MB variant, PanOS)
Acorn 80186 (DOS)
Acorn 80286 (DOS)
Acorn ARM1 (Brazil monitor only)
Acorn A500 (Arthur. Not to be confused with the A500 distinct machine)
Casper 68000 (FLEX / program development)
Cumana 68008 (OS-9)
PEDL Z80 (unknown)
Torch Z80 (CP/N)
Torch 8086 (DOS)
Torch 68000 / Z80 combo (UNIX and CP/N)
Two versions of the Torch 68k board existed - the later one was faster and
with more on-board memory. Two versions of their Z80-only board existed too;
one had a local serial interface.
People have privately homebrewed other CPUs for the system (6509, 6809, ARM7
and PDP-11 spring to mind).
However, whether all this 'counts' or not is debatable; Acorn didn't (sadly)
forsee people wanting to have more than one 'secondary' CPU attached at any
one time, so the connection between the BBC side and any additional CPU was
really point-to-point only rather than a true bus; I think Torch were the only
people to offer a setup that contained both 68k and Z80 alongside the BBC's
native CPU (I seem to recall that in their case the switch between CPUs is
handled by on-board firmware and a bit of voodoo)
cheers
Jules
9:55 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at
yahoo.co.uk>
Chris M wrote:
[Dimension 68000]
Olivetti M20 8086 (DOS or CP/M86) ( has Z8001 as main processor )
Dwight
Was curious if there was anything like it across
the
pond. Or did I ask this already...
Closest thing is probably the humble BBC micro, to be honest. Acorn
designed them from the outset to allow add-on processors to be used
(externally on the model B, and either externally or internally with the
later Master series), and for the second processor to be able to take over
control of the host BBC. They always had plans for Z80 and additional 6502
boards for the machines; I believe that the 32016 and 80186 boards weren't
envisaged until later on.
Several manufacturers (including Acorn) made coprocessor boards for the
machines (notional OS in brackets, although you were free to run what you
wanted really):
Acorn Z80 (CP/M)
Acorn 6502 (application-level code)
Acorn 65C102 (application-level code)
Acorn 32016 (Master internal, PanOS)
Acorn 32016 (1MB variant, PanOS)
Acorn 32016 (4MB variant, PanOS)
Acorn 80186 (DOS)
Acorn 80286 (DOS)
Acorn ARM1 (Brazil monitor only)
Acorn A500 (Arthur. Not to be confused with the A500 distinct machine)
Casper 68000 (FLEX / program development)
Cumana 68008 (OS-9)
PEDL Z80 (unknown)
Torch Z80 (CP/N)
Torch 8086 (DOS)
Torch 68000 / Z80 combo (UNIX and CP/N)
Two versions of the Torch 68k board existed - the later one was faster and
with more on-board memory. Two versions of their Z80-only board existed
too; one had a local serial interface.
People have privately homebrewed other CPUs for the system (6509, 6809,
ARM7 and PDP-11 spring to mind).
However, whether all this 'counts' or not is debatable; Acorn didn't
(sadly) forsee people wanting to have more than one 'secondary' CPU
attached at any one time, so the connection between the BBC side and any
additional CPU was really point-to-point only rather than a true bus; I
think Torch were the only people to offer a setup that contained both 68k
and Z80 alongside the BBC's native CPU (I seem to recall that in their case
the switch between CPUs is handled by on-board firmware and a bit of
voodoo)
cheers
Jules
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29 Nov
29 Nov
3:17 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
However, whether all this 'counts' or not is
debatable; Acorn didn't (sadly)
forsee people wanting to have more than one 'secondary' CPU attached at any
one time, so the connection between the BBC side and any additional CPU was
really point-to-point only rather than a true bus; I think Torch were the only
I thought at least one of the Torch second processors, probably the
'Graduate' (8088-based MS-DOS one) connected to the 1MHz bus not to the
Tube. IIRC, it made use of a feature of the BBC micro which causes the
latter to boot from an area of ROM in the FDxx space if one of the
interrupt lines is asserted during/just after a reset.
In which case you should eb able to link up a normal Tube-connected
second processor too.
Writing the necessary software is left as an exercise for the reader ;-)
-tony
28 Nov
28 Nov
4:10 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
The place I used to work got talked into one (for resale, but no one was
ever interested in it). I used it because it could read all manner of
exotic floppy disks, and I even interfaced an 8" (shugart, I think) to it.
Wasn't very hard. I was able to read weird compupro disks with it.
Ours had the 68000 (wasn't it a 68010?), a 6502, and the Intel or Zilog
chip-- can't recall which.
At 12:05 PM 11/28/2006 -0800, you wrote:
--- Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at
yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
Yesterday is history. tomorrow; a mystery, and today is a gift,
that's why we call it the present.
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Chris M wrote:
Maybe more so then I even thought. If you're not
familiar with it, the Dimension 68000 tried to be all
things to all people. Surely not an unobtainable goal,
there have been numerous add-on cards for other
machines that worked well, but the "emulation" aspects
didn't work out so well (I'm told). It probably took
more resources then they could muster at the time, or
just more time. Mindcraft I think was the company
IIRC. I have one reserved for me by someone, but I'm
trying to raise the capitol to secure several more
boxes (albeit not working) to distribute to the masses
when the time is right. Truly a unique uh platform as
far as I can tell.
Was curious if there was anything like it across the
pond. Or did I ask this already...
The 68k portion worked quite well though. If you
google it you'll find there was a few at work at JPL
back in the day.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited if you all are going to cheat like crazy, then
I'm
going to submit the Dimension 68000. No it wasn't
loaded as stock with FOUR cpu's, but they were
"intended" as optional equipment - 68000 running
CP/M
68K, 8088 for MS-DOS, 6502 for Apple DOS, and a
Z80
for CP/M. So there.
Actually, I'm not sure if that should count or
not... it's certainly closer to
qualifying than something which just happened to
have CPUs as peripheral
processors. I suppose it depends on how "optional"
they were and how much
additional circuitry was needed to support them.
2 Dec
2 Dec
2:17 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 08:35 -0600, Jules Richardson wrote:
Ahh, I was originally asking after systems with
different CPUs though, not
several of the same type - mainly to rule out lots of posts about parallel
machines (as I was curious as to how many manufacturers managed to make a go
of selling 'average' systems with a mixture of CPU types - parallel machines
tend to be in a different league)
Throwing in my two ?re:
The Norsk Data ND-500 and ND-5000 series. The ND-500 CPU was a card rack
to itself, the ND-5000 was crunched together on a VLSI-packed modular
PCB sandwich. The ND-500 ran a very minimal OS called the "Swapper", and
had a microcode which was loaded by the ND-100. The ND-100 ran the OS
(SINTRAN III/VSX) and a lot of applications, while programs written for
the 500 side would be loaded into the dual-ported memory by the 100.
The 5000 was a reimplementation of the 500 into VLSI gate arrays.
http://toresbe.at.ifi.uio.no/nd560-unproc.jpeg
http://toresbe.at.ifi.uio.no/nd/nd-5000/
The latter is a ND-5700 - you can tell by the three layers - with the
cache and some of the decoding/pipelining units, but without the fourth
layer, the IDAC, AKA the "Booster". (a single board which covered most
of the third layer. Added cache and handled in hardware certain
addressing modes that the 5700 and below handled in microcode)
-Tore
28 Nov
28 Nov
12:02 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
In article <381590.42720.qm at web61022.mail.yahoo.com>,
Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> writes:
if you all are going to cheat like crazy, then
I'm
going to submit the Dimension 68000. No it wasn't
loaded as stock with FOUR cpu's, but they were
"intended" as optional equipment - 68000 running CP/M
68K, 8088 for MS-DOS, 6502 for Apple DOS, and a Z80
for CP/M. So there.
OK, how about 45 CPUs? The Evans & Sutherland ESV workstation has
one MIPS R4000 and anywhere from 4 to 44 AT&T DSP32Cs.
Made right here in Utah.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
1:49 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006, Richard wrote:
OK, how about 45 CPUs? The Evans & Sutherland ESV
workstation has
one MIPS R4000 and anywhere from 4 to 44 AT&T DSP32Cs.
Made right here in Utah.
Deep Crack. The custom machine that John Gilmore made to defeat DES,
hundreds of dedicated processors, each trying its own possibilities.
2:28 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
In article <20061128134720.R6928 at shell.lmi.net>,
Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> writes:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006, Richard wrote:
OK, but do you /own/ one? :-)
Also, the ESV has quite a heap of commercially available standard
CPUs, not custom CPUs. That didn't happen until the Freedom series
accelerators for Sun, HP and IBM workstations.
I have an AT&T Pixel Machine as well and it has gobs of processors in
it. I think they are also AT&T DSP32Cs IIRC.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
OK, how about 45 CPUs? The Evans &
Sutherland ESV workstation has
one MIPS R4000 and anywhere from 4 to 44 AT&T DSP32Cs.
Made right here in Utah.
Deep Crack. The custom machine that John Gilmore made to defeat DES,
hundreds of dedicated processors, each trying its own possibilities.
2:56 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
In article <E1GpBR3-0007Yu-00 at xmission.xmission.com>,
Richard <legalize at xmission.com> writes:
Also, the ESV has quite a heap of commercially
available standard
CPUs, not custom CPUs. That didn't happen until the Freedom series
accelerators for Sun, HP and IBM workstations.
I retract that statement slightly -- the Freedom series used the AMD
29k chip for per-vertex processing, but had more custom ASICs (a single
ASIC replicated more times) than the ESV for per-pixel processing.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
2:56 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
> Deep Crack. The custom machine that John Gilmore
made to defeat DES,
> hundreds of dedicated processors, each trying its own possibilities.
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006, Richard wrote:
OK, but do you /own/ one? :-)
I have one of the processor chips.
. . . just need about 1800 more, and some support circuitry, . . .
3:09 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
On Nov 28, 2006, at 5:56 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Doug Humphrey has one of the CPU boards from that machine. I've
drooled upon it many times.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL
> Deep
Crack. The custom machine that John Gilmore made to defeat
> DES,
> hundreds of dedicated processors, each trying its own possibilities.
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006, Richard wrote:
OK, but do you /own/ one? :-)
I have one of the processor chips.
. . . just need about 1800 more, and some support circuitry, . . . 
3:03 p.m.
New subject: multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries
On Tuesday 28 November 2006 15:02, Richard wrote:
In article <381590.42720.qm at
web61022.mail.yahoo.com>,
Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> writes:
How about a Maspar MP-1?
IIRC, it was 16,384 4-bit processors in a single machine, and a frontend
of either a VAXstation 3520 (which I have, unfortunately, I couldn't
save the MP1), or later, a MIPS-based DECstation.
Or, PASM-1. It was a massively parallel machine made out of 68000 and
68010 MVME boards, and some custom interconnect. (FWIW, I have most of
the remains of it, but it was a custom/research machine).
The largest number of 'real' processors in a machine (ie, SMP), goes to
a NCR WorldMark (aka Voyager) 5100 that's in my friend's garage. two
machines with 32 x PPro 200's and 4GB ram each in a single "cabinet".
I've also got a Sun E6500 which I could put 24 x 400MHz USII's in. Not
really the "fastest" machine, though. That belongs to the next one...
I've also got a bunch of (too many) IBM 9076-N81 (SP Nighthawk high
node), which each have 16 x 375MHz POWER3-II CPUs, 8-16GB ram (well,
ok, so one node has 32GB ;), and a high-speed interconnect card that
has a datarate of 1GB/sec (yes, 1GByte, it's a parallel transport, not
a serial transport). 4 fit in a single rack, with a switch. If
you're running an program using MPI libraries, one rack looks a lot
like a 64-processor machine. (If you include the service processors on
each node, the switch, and the rack's power supply, that's actually 70
processors. More if you include uC's and dedicated processors on
things like the network cards and SCSI disks. :)
Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
if you all are going to cheat like crazy, then
I'm
going to submit the Dimension 68000. No it wasn't
loaded as stock with FOUR cpu's, but they were
"intended" as optional equipment - 68000 running CP/M
68K, 8088 for MS-DOS, 6502 for Apple DOS, and a Z80
for CP/M. So there.
OK, how about 45 CPUs? The Evans & Sutherland ESV workstation has
one MIPS R4000 and anywhere from 4 to 44 AT&T DSP32Cs.
Made right here in Utah.
9:45 a.m.
On 27 Nov 2006 at 20:54, woodelf wrote:
But what with different CPU's could you run?
Looking back in hind sight
the only OS out there was CP/M for the 8080. All the rest just seemed
to have BASIC in ROM and some way of saveing programs.
Lots of "chicken and egg" here. Before affordable floppy storage
was available, there was little need for much in the way of operating
systems; you loaded a program from audio cassette or (if you were
rich), paper tape and ran it. Most folks got by with just a
"monitor".
When floppy systems got a little more affordable, then there was a
definite need for operating systems. And there were quite a few--
consider all of the office word processing systems; they all had
their own operating systems and they were all different (e.g., you
couldn't read CPT diskettes on a Vydec).
Some of this was the result of the old "operating system is a cost of
the hardware" mindset. Univac didn't use CDC's operating system or
its methodologies. So if you were developing a "serious" micro
system (as opposed to hobbyist), you wrote your own OS and your own
applications. The fact that you used the same CPU as someone else,
was interesting, but not important. The range of peripheral
interface differences was staggering--you weren't going to even try
to run your Artec WP software on another 8080-based system.
In my mind, that's why Gary Kildall earned his gold star--the
realization that you could sell an operating system independent of
the manufacturer's hardware--and toss in a few utilities, such as an
assembler and an editor that made it useful.
The next step--applications--with really (for the time) top-notch
products such as WordStar served as impetus for manufacturers to
simply license an OS and resell the applications. No one actually
wanted to develop their own OS--it was expensive and then there was
the matter of applications.
At Durango, we developed the entire thing top-to-bottom, hardware, OS
(CP/M wasn't quite real when we started) and applications. It was
horribly expensive, but one couldn't simply deploy an empty box and
tell customers to find their own software. Other manufacturers did
likewise in the beginning.
Eventually, we offered CP/M for the Durango just to give customers
access to the generic x80 application base. I recall the VP of
finance telling me that he couldn't believe how *cheap* it was to use
someone else's software--and how that made the whole scheme suspect.
After that, applications software just ballooned--and in particular,
when VisiCalc (and its various clones) got deployed, every executive
and not just their secretaries, had to have a computer of some sort.
Spreadsheets were cool. Aside from some niche applications, the
notion of developing a unique OS for your own hardware was pretty
much dead. Many vertical market developers (which is where the real
money was) had already discovered Gordon Eubank's BASIC-M and the
follow-on CBASIC.
There were CP/M "work alike" competitors, but the price point of
CP/M, particularly with OEMs was just too hard to beat.
Manufacturers who decided to use other non-x80 CPUs found themselves
firmly mired in the old "build a box, write the software" mold.
Apple is one such case and is really surprising in that it managed to
survive and prosper.
Cheers,
Chuck
10:35 a.m.
On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 09:45 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote:
The next step--applications--with really (for the
time) top-notch
products such as WordStar served as impetus for manufacturers to
simply license an OS and resell the applications. No one actually
wanted to develop their own OS--it was expensive and then there was
the matter of applications.
WordStar collects a great deal of derision now, but when it came
out, I thought it just might have been developed by an extra-terrestrial
civilization, and delivered to us poor schmucks to help us crawl out of
the muck and become civilized ourselves. (I didn't have much experience
with decent software at the time.)
Many vertical market developers (which is where the
real
money was) had already discovered Gordon Eubank's BASIC-M and the
follow-on CBASIC.
The three BASICS that ruled the CP/M world were the Microsoft BASIC
interpreter, generally referred to as "M-BASIC" in the U.S., BASIC-E,
Gordon Eubanks' public domain compiler, developed while he was attending
class with Gary Kildall at the Naval Postgraduate School, and CBASIC,
which is an extension of BASIC-E by Gordon, made on his own time, and
not in the public domain. Of these, CBASIC is far and away the best.
(Bias note: Gordon is a friend of mine. I believe I'm being objective,
but YMMV.)
There were CP/M "work alike" competitors,
but the price point of
CP/M, particularly with OEMs was just too hard to beat.
Manufacturers who decided to use other non-x80 CPUs found themselves
firmly mired in the old "build a box, write the software" mold.
Apple is one such case and is really surprising in that it managed to
survive and prosper.
You can thank the Woz for that. His clear thinking kept Steve Jobs
from killing the company, which he would have done,
given his hand...
IMHO.
Peace,
Warren E. Wolfe
wizard at voyager.net
2:01 p.m.
On Nov 28, 2006, at 1:35 PM, Warren Wolfe wrote:
WordStar collects a great deal of derision now,
but when it came
out, I thought it just might have been developed by an extra-
terrestrial
civilization, and delivered to us poor schmucks to help us crawl
out of
the muck and become civilized ourselves. (I didn't have much
experience
with decent software at the time.)
I've no idea why Wordstar gets badmouthed so often. It's a fine
word processor, especially for its era.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL
3:49 p.m.
On 28 Nov 2006 at 17:01, Dave McGuire wrote:
I've no idea why Wordstar gets badmouthed so
often. It's a fine
word processor, especially for its era.
Not too long ago, I brought up the Word for DOS demo diskette that
was packed in with PC magazine. What hit me right away was how much
of the 80x25 mono display was taken up by "fluff" and how small the
text window actually was compared to WordStar 4.
Somewhere, I've got a copy of WS 2000 that works with the
downloadable fonts in a Hercules Graphics Plus card. Even on a lowly
XT, it was pretty snappy.
Cheers,
Chuck
2:04 p.m.
On 28 Nov 2006 at 13:35, Warren Wolfe wrote:
WordStar collects a great deal of derision now,
but when it came
out, I thought it just might have been developed by an extra-terrestrial
civilization, and delivered to us poor schmucks to help us crawl out of
the muck and become civilized ourselves. (I didn't have much experience
with decent software at the time.)
The WS keystrokes are so engrained in my consciousness that I use the
same keystrokes in my own personal editor and use Joe when I'm on
*nix. To a touch typist, they made tons of sense--being able to
position the cursor without having your hands leave the home keys.
One MicroPro product that never gained much respect was WordStar 2000-
-it really was a huge improvement over the original, yet few people
used it. I have tons of my own correspondence still on WS2K.
A good friend still maintains his contacts list as a DataStar
database, running under CP/M 2.2 emulation on his XP-equipped PC.
Cheers,
Chuck
2:59 p.m.
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote:
The WS keystrokes are so engrained in my consciousness
that I use the
same keystrokes in my own personal editor and use Joe when I'm on
*nix. To a touch typist, they made tons of sense--being able to
position the cursor without having your hands leave the home keys.
Wordstar shows the difference between "ease of use" v "ease of
learning".
They are the same, only if one is incapable of learning.
27 Nov
27 Nov
4:31 p.m.
On 28/11/06 00:14, "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
You're speaking strange tongues there, mate :)
*sulkage +100%*
Of course, the
drives were only sold in france so they still fetch a premium
I haev an idea mine a prototype English ones.... WHAT! Nobody
told me about that.....bah! *sulks*
Oh well.... 3 CPUs is a bit of an overstatement. There is a Z80 in
there for user
programs. And a 6809 for I/O (!), the former with 64K RAM, the latter
with 8K IIRC. The last 'CPU' is an NEC 7220 graphics chip with 96K video
RAM. 3 bitplanes, there's no text mode IIRC.
Nope. It's still a good example of 80's ingeniousness though, and I still
want one :)
--
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?
30 Nov
30 Nov
4:19 a.m.
I am not convinced. A Tiger turned up on E-bay
recently, and did not sell
for that much money.
WHAT! Nobody told me about that.....bah! *sulks*
I'd love a Tiger, if only to complete my Tangerine collection. The writeup
it got in Personal Computer News sold it as a fantastic machine with its 3
CPUs......
It's certainly an interesting design. I'd love to find the disk
controller (or at least a scheamtic of it) for mine -- all the ROM I have
does is ask for a boot disk (presumanly CP/M).
3 CPUs is a bit of an overstatement. There is a Z80 in there for user
programs. And a 6809 for I/O (!), the former with 64K RAM, the latter
with 8K IIRC. The last 'CPU' is an NEC 7220 graphics chip with 96K video
RAM. 3 bitplanes, there's no text mode IIRC.
-tony
4:33 p.m.
In article <456ABDEF.3030209 at yahoo.co.uk>,
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
Ditto with Vectrexes, HH Tigers, Einsteins, and the
Sinclair MK14.
Vextrexes seem to come up on ebay with a fair amount of regularity for
< $50.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
24 Nov
24 Nov
11:02 p.m.
On Fri, 2006-11-24 at 23:46 +0000, Tony Duell wrote:
OK, here is a partial list of my collection. Not
updated recently, so
some new acquisitions aren't there...
[ List of equipment to put "The Twelve Days of Christmas" to shame
clipped. ]
Ack. I thought I was a packrat. It turns out I'm a piker. *SIGH*
Peace,
Warren E. Wolfe
wizard at voyager.net
6358
days inactive
6370
days old
111 comments
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