Modcomp VME bus 68000 computer

devin davison lyokoboy0 at gmail.com
Sun Nov 4 11:38:25 CST 2018


Hello, been a while since ive written to the list. I met someone the other
day that used to work for modcomp. He gave me a tour, he still has working
modcomp computers in his home. He was clearing out a bunch of stuff, he
gave me a bunch of terminals and dos era computers. Among the computers is
a modcomp branded motorolla 68k based machine. I can not find any
information on the system. From what i understand, the system was to be
tied in to the modcomp minicomputer bus and used as a modern alternative
for large antiquated disks and tapes. There is a large pair of interface
connectors on the back, never seen anything like them before.

I do not have a modomp computer yet, but this 68k machine looks quite
interesting. It is essentially a vme bus backpane in a desktop computer
case. A hard disk and tape drive are installed. Looks to have floating
point and network card as well. I managed to make the proper serial cable,
and was able to get to a debugger and monitor at power on. I was under the
understanding that this machine could run a port of unix to 68k, called
unix/68. I am uncertain of any details on the machine, i was hoping someone
here could me in the right direction of getting the machine to boot. The
drive still spins up, it may even have an install of unix on it, i might
have to type in some kind of boot parameter or jump to some address from
the monitor to kick off the boot process.

Any advice on how to proceed is appreciated.
Within the following month i am supposed to get  a mountain of modcomp
documentation, ill have to check back here and see if its duplicate or
original information and scan it all. He was also going to give me a copy
of a modcomp emulator he wrote, I have found no such thing elsewhere on
line, so perhaps it would be of use to someone else here too once i get it.

--Devin D.


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