out-of-mainstream minis

[Rod Smallwood]

I'm sure its very intersting.
The website is designed for domestic consumption only as its all in Danish.

Rod


On 21/08/2015 11:27, Ian S. King wrote:
> I had the privilege of visiting what Nico calls a 'museum-to-be' yesterday
> evening, and it is far more than most of what I've seen!  They have a very
> substantial collection of all sorts of systems, peripherals and
> documentation, including a GIER from ca. 1962 that I saw (and heard) run.
> As a debugging/operations aid, they had attached the overflow bit to a
> speaker so it could generate 1-bit sound - one demo they gave me was a
> program to calculate e that played a sound for each iteration so you could
> hear the steady progress.  But of course if there is a sound output, no one
> can avoid playing with it.  There were numerous pieces of computationally
> generated music composed for the machine (on paper tape), but also a
> program for playing a recorded, real-life sound in 1-bit audio!
>
> The collection includes numerous other computers including pretty much the
> entire RC line, as well as pre-computer tabulators, keypunches, paper
> handling machine and the like.  The artifacts are well-ordered and in large
> part well labeled for even the uninitiated visitor.
>
> Everything is laid out quite thoughtfully, with wide aisles, in a large,
> well-lit basement.  There are interpretive displays here and there, as well
> as a small but appealing lecture/display area.
>
> The datamuseum.dk collection represents 25 years of accumulation, I was
> told.  But more importantly, I think their work demonstrates a very
> well-considered approach for presenting the history of the collection's
> machines to visitors.
>
> My hosts were also warm and wonderful people who clearly love what they do
> and enjoy sharing it.  They made me feel among friends, if not family.  :-)
>
>
> Thanks, Finn and everyone else (sorry, I'm bad with names), for sharing
> your time and your passion with me!  -- Ian
>
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 12:43 AM, Nico de Jong <nico at farumdata.dk> wrote:
>
>> I share your favourite(s). In the danish IT-museum-to-be (
>> www.datamuseum.dk) we have two P857-based systems running. We have lots
>> of spare parts and nearly all documentation, so if you need something, you
>> are welcome to ask.
>> I'm presently building a "table top" version of a system with the P857
>> CPU, 35cm H x 60 deep x 19" wide, with a dual 8" floppy drive, and a 80486
>> PC for program loading etc.
>> The system is built into a P859 box. The P859 CPU is special, as it has a
>> V24 connection that goes to a LED display with push buttons. Very nice
>> indeed.
>> For that system, I have developped a Windows based Assembler, and a
>> Windows based simulator. The simulator takes assembled programs (in my
>> system called *.OBJ) and the original source. You can then step through the
>> instructions, and follow them through the text file on the PC.
>> I am presently trying to execute various utility programs, sent to me by a
>> Belgion ex-Philips employee, who did a lot of work on the P800 series.
>> I myself worked with the P800 series, disguised as the PTS6800 series for
>> 4-5 years full time.
>> The PTS 6800 series was used extensively in banks, mainly in Scandinavia,
>> Greece, Barclay SouthAfrica, Philippines. In Sweden also in the airline
>> industry. In Denmark it was used mainly by local authorities, PTT, Railway
>> (ticket printing), and some other small-time projects. In one of the
>> project it was connected to an ATM (fun project).
>> I know of one collector in the Netherlands (Camiel), and some guys who
>> have no hardware but a lot of knowledge
>> /Nico
>>    ----- Original Message -----
>>    From: tony duell
>>    To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
>>    Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2015 7:31 AM
>>    Subject: RE: out-of-mainstream minis
>>
>>
>>    Not all minis came from the States :-)
>>
>>    One of my favourite non-mainstream families is the Philips P800 series.
>> It's
>>    a 16 bit machine with 16 registers (0 is the program counter and 15
>>    is the stack pointer, rest are mostly general purpose) and separate
>>    I/O instructions (not memory-mapped I/O). There were several models
>>    with various implementations of the architecture, including
>>
>>    P850 (TTL, hardwired not microcoded)
>>
>>    P855, P852, P856, P857, P860 (TTL, microcoded)
>>
>>    P851 (Custom bitslice ICs, microcoded)
>>
>>    P854 (AM2900 bitslice, microcoded)
>>
>>    P853 I think (Single chip)
>>
>>    No, I don't have all of those...
>>
>>    -tony
>>    =
>>
>
>