ISO: TI 980 (not 980A or 980B) Hardware docs

[Josh Dersch]

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 2:07 AM Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 8:23 PM Josh Dersch via cctalk
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> > A straight TI 980 (not one of the later 980A or 980B variants) appeared
> on
> > my doorstep this afternoon.
>
> Interesting.  Unfortunately, I have no docs (outside of what's on
> Bitsavers).
>
> Mine is the later 980A variety, FWIW, with fat TI4060 DRAMs not core.
> I only recently got a console key for it.
>
> > (Anyone have any spare parts? The core memory boards & chassis are
> labeled
> > well enough for me to see that I'm missing one of the "DA" boards...)
>
> The only spare parts would be some memory boards.  I'll have to pull
> them out and check them, but definitely DRAM and I think 8K or 24K
> capacity, and I have no idea if they work on all variants or just
> specific models.  No spare I/O or CPU boards.
>

I'd be interested to see pictures of the card cages.  I know what a 980B
looks like and it's a significant revision from the 980 I have here -- the
CPU is condensed from 13 or 14 boards down to four or so.  I haven't been
able to find a picture of the 980A's insides, curious to know how it
differs.


>
> I was just glancing over at the docs on Bitsavers to see what it might
> take to write a memory tester to toggle in.  Nothing exhaustive just
> simple write-read-compare testing.  I know nothing of the architecture
> so even that would take me a bit to figure out.
>
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ti/980/


Somewhere I have a couple of very short programs I hand-assembled to test
out my 980B, I'll see if I can't dig them up... I suspect I left them on my
old laptop.

Thanks,
- Josh


>
>
> -ethan
>