RE: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Michael Holley]

I worked for the FutureNet division of Data I/O in the late 1980s. One 
disastrous product was a UNIX based coprocessor system that plugged into an IBM 
PC/AT. The idea was to run circuit board layout software and simulation on a 
PC. This would be less expensive than the Daisy, Mentor, or Valid workstations. 
The coprocessor was an Opus plug in board based on the National 32032 CPU.
http://cpu-ns32k.net/Opus.html

When you ordered the package you got the coprocessor board and a 5 MB hard 
drive loaded with UNIX and the design software. On a good day the system 
worked. It was discontinued when PCs with the 368 processor were available. 

Michael Holley

Re: Vt 103 / lsi 11/23 marketed as a desktop late 1980

[Jerome H. Fine]

>william degnan wrote:


Prior to the DEC Rainbow, Chrislin Industries was marketing the 11/23 with
vt103 as a  desktop computer.  This is a 3rd party vendor.  Maybe they were
on to something...


Back around 1988, one of my customers had a few VT103
systems with just an RX02 for storage.  A 3rd party
controller for an MFM drive (ST506 or DEC RD51) was
added since the DEC RQDX1 took too much power.  There
was still sufficient power and room to place the
ST506 drive inside at the base of the VT103.

Prior to that point, I had a VT103 with just 256 KB
of memory and a DSD 880/8 which had an 8 GB hard
drive / RX03 floppy drive in an external box.  So
there were other 3rd party solutions as well.

At one point, just to say that I had done so, I placed
a quad PDP-11/73 CPU along with 4 MB of memory, an ESDI
controller and a DHV11 with 8 serial ports into the
backplane of a VT103.  I had to power the three 600 MG
hard drives from an additional PC power supply since
there was insufficient power from the VT103.  But that
demonstrated that just a 4 x 4 Qbus backplane was
sufficient to run an extremely powerful PDP-11 system
using the VT103 as a base system with its own console
terminal.  At one point, I heard that someone even
managed to make the first two slots ABCD which allowed
a MicroVAX II to be used instead, although a PDP-11/83
with PMI memory would have also been possible or a
PDP-11/93 could also have been used and one quad slot
would still have been available without the ABCD change
to the backplane.

These combinations could have been produced by DEC
and been years and technology ahead of the PC computer,
but that never happened.  I have the impression that
the VAX was placed in a position of priority and most
development on the PDP-11 side which could compete with
the 32-bit VAX was restricted even though there were
still many applications where a 16-bit system was more
than adequate.  DEC could have sold millions of VT103
systems.

Jerome Fine

Ibm s-100 system?

[william degnan]

Byte Jan 1981 page 204 refers to an IBM S-100 microcomputer system IBM
demoed in Europe.  Anyone here seen this machine or heard about it?

Bill Degnan
twitter: billdeg
vintagecomputer.net

Re: Vt 103 / lsi 11/23 marketed as a desktop late 1980

[Ethan Dicks]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Jerome H. Fine  wrote:
>>william degnan wrote:
>> Prior to the DEC Rainbow, Chrislin Industries was marketing the 11/23 with
>> vt103 as a  desktop computer.  This is a 3rd party vendor.  Maybe they
>> were on to something...
>>
> Back around 1988, one of my customers had a few VT103
> systems with just an RX02 for storage.  A 3rd party
> controller for an MFM drive (ST506 or DEC RD51) was
> added since the DEC RQDX1 took too much power.  There
> was still sufficient power and room to place the
> ST506 drive inside at the base of the VT103.

Sounds like a sweet little system... in 1987, I was using an 11/23 in
a BA11N (5.25"-tall rack-mount box) with RX02 and RLV11+RL01, so
packing all that, including the 5MB disk into a VT103 would have been
quite nice.

> Prior to that point, I had a VT103 with just 256 KB
> of memory and a DSD 880/8 which had an 8 GB hard
> drive / RX03 floppy drive in an external box.  So
> there were other 3rd party solutions as well.

8MB?  But otherwise, also nice.

> At one point, just to say that I had done so, I placed
> a quad PDP-11/73 CPU along with 4 MB of memory, an ESDI
> controller and a DHV11 with 8 serial ports into the
> backplane of a VT103.

Now you're talking!

> I had to power the three 600 MG
> hard drives from an additional PC power supply since
> there was insufficient power from the VT103.

Sure.

>  But that
> demonstrated that just a 4 x 4 Qbus backplane was
> sufficient to run an extremely powerful PDP-11 system
> using the VT103 as a base system with its own console
> terminal.

Yep.  The biggest limitation was power, the second was limited number
of slots, so you needed small but powerful cards to make it
worthwhile.

> At one point, I heard that someone even
> managed to make the first two slots ABCD which allowed
> a MicroVAX II to be used instead

Wow.  That sounds like a fun but much bigger hack.

I have a VT103 (w/TU58)... I did set up a simple 11/23 in it once, but
I should see what I can do with a SCSI card...

-ethan

Re: Ibm s-100 system?

[Paul Berger]

On 2016-04-21 8:49 PM, william degnan wrote:

Byte Jan 1981 page 204 refers to an IBM S-100 microcomputer system IBM
demoed in Europe.  Anyone here seen this machine or heard about it?

Bill Degnan
twitter: billdeg
vintagecomputer.net
Interesting I had never heard of that , but there prediction was correct 
as the 5150 was announced that summer,  their prediction that S100 would 
become the defacto standard not so much.


Paul.

Re: Ibm s-100 system?

[Guy Sotomayor]

Nothing I ever heard of and I was in IBM Boca at the time and would have heard
*something* about it.

TTFN - Guy

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 4:49 PM, william degnan  wrote:
> 
> Byte Jan 1981 page 204 refers to an IBM S-100 microcomputer system IBM
> demoed in Europe.  Anyone here seen this machine or heard about it?
> 
> Bill Degnan
> twitter: billdeg
> vintagecomputer.net

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Michael Thompson]

>
> Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 20:08:56 -0400
> From: Toby Thain 
> Subject: Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s -
> was Re: SGI ONYX
>
> On 2016-04-20 8:02 PM, Michael Thompson wrote:
> >
> > I have a quad-860 VME board for Sun systems in my collection.
> >
>
> Do you have the development environment for it?
>
> --Toby
>

Yes, but it is on a Sun 4/260 that us buried in my collection.

-- 
Michael Thompson

Vt 103 / lsi 11/23 marketed as a desktop late 1980

[william degnan]

Prior to the DEC Rainbow, Chrislin Industries was marketing the 11/23 with
vt103 as a  desktop computer.  This is a 3rd party vendor.  Maybe they were
on to something...

Bill Degnan
twitter: billdeg
vintagecomputer.net

Re: Z80 /WAIT signal question

[John Robertson]

I do know that the Wait signal was used by the Fluke 90 tester so it could be 
clamped on top of an in circuit Z80 and run memory and I/O tests while the CPU 
was doing its regular operations.

On vacation so haven't easy access to the operators manual for the Fluke 90 
though...

John :-#)#

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 1:36 PM, Eric Smith  wrote:
> 
> A friend building a Z80 system asked me about whether the Z80 /WAIT
> signal has any effect during machine cycles that aren't
> memory/IO/intack cycles (i.e., neither /MREQ and /IORQ asserted). The
> user manual only describes the use of /WAIT for adding wait states, so
> I expect it probably only affects mem/IO/intack cycles, but I can't
> find anything definitive in the user manual.
> 
> I'm hoping someone can save me the time of hooking up a logic analyzer
> and running the experiment.
> 
> Thanks!
> Eric

Re: Z80 /WAIT signal question

[Jon Elson]

On 04/21/2016 12:36 PM, Eric Smith wrote:

A friend building a Z80 system asked me about whether the Z80 /WAIT
signal has any effect during machine cycles that aren't
memory/IO/intack cycles (i.e., neither /MREQ and /IORQ asserted). The
user manual only describes the use of /WAIT for adding wait states, so
I expect it probably only affects mem/IO/intack cycles, but I can't
find anything definitive in the user manual.


Oh, boy!  I ought to know this one, but really don't.  I 
never tried to use it except on some kind of data cycle.
It could, possibly, depend on what implementation of the 
Z-80 you are using.  I built some battery-powered stuff 
using a Harris Z-80 clone that was all CMOS.  Some timings 
were a bit different from a Zilog Z-80.


Jon

Re: Resolved: VAX-11/750 ECKAL (Cache/TB) Diagnostic failure

[Josh Dersch]

And to reply to my own mail:  The issue was an improperly installed TU80 
controller (it wasn't me!).  The NPG jumper was not removed from the 
backplane when the card was installed.


So:  Double-check your grants, even when testing something seemingly 
unrelated, like your cache.  Lesson learned.


- Josh

On 4/21/16 8:15 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:

Hey all --

I resolved the weird failure I was seeing on my 11/750 with the 
Cache/TB diagnostic and since it was fairly random I thought I'd share 
it to save people from the future (hi, people from the future!) from 
going through the same machinations I did.


Issue:  ECKAL diagnostic loads, prints banner and halts after about a 
second with:


3488   06

No other diagnostic is provided, and since there don't appear to be 
any listings or real documents covering the test, it's not 
particularly helpful.


What I tried (prior to tonight):

- Checked voltages.
- Double-checked backplane for bent/shorted pins.
- Cleaned and reseated every socketed chip (especially the gate 
arrays).  On *all* boards.

- Swapped in a spare L0003 (after cleaning, as above).
- Swapped in all the other spares I have (one at a time, again, after 
cleaning).

- Cleaned backplane with contact cleaner.
- Removed 2nd UNIBUS card.
- Tried a *third* L0003 card (labeled "GOOD" as of 1996 :)).

No change in behavior whatsoever.  Very odd.  Very frustrating.

So tonight I thought, hey, why not disconnect the UNIBUS just in case 
something odd is going on there.  Pulled the Unibus jumper connecting 
the two backplanes, replaced with terminator.


ECKAL diagnostic now runs and passes.

So:  This particular fault (at least in this case) is due to some 
oddity on the UNIBUS.  I suspect a problem with NPG grants, but I'm 
going to have to go over this with a fine-toothed comb, it could be a 
bad controller in there doing something mean.


Hope this helps someone at some future date...
- Josh

Resolved: VAX-11/750 ECKAL (Cache/TB) Diagnostic failure

[Josh Dersch]

Hey all --

I resolved the weird failure I was seeing on my 11/750 with the Cache/TB 
diagnostic and since it was fairly random I thought I'd share it to save 
people from the future (hi, people from the future!) from going through 
the same machinations I did.


Issue:  ECKAL diagnostic loads, prints banner and halts after about a 
second with:


3488   06

No other diagnostic is provided, and since there don't appear to be any 
listings or real documents covering the test, it's not particularly helpful.


What I tried (prior to tonight):

- Checked voltages.
- Double-checked backplane for bent/shorted pins.
- Cleaned and reseated every socketed chip (especially the gate 
arrays).  On *all* boards.

- Swapped in a spare L0003 (after cleaning, as above).
- Swapped in all the other spares I have (one at a time, again, after 
cleaning).

- Cleaned backplane with contact cleaner.
- Removed 2nd UNIBUS card.
- Tried a *third* L0003 card (labeled "GOOD" as of 1996 :)).

No change in behavior whatsoever.  Very odd.  Very frustrating.

So tonight I thought, hey, why not disconnect the UNIBUS just in case 
something odd is going on there.  Pulled the Unibus jumper connecting 
the two backplanes, replaced with terminator.


ECKAL diagnostic now runs and passes.

So:  This particular fault (at least in this case) is due to some oddity 
on the UNIBUS.  I suspect a problem with NPG grants, but I'm going to 
have to go over this with a fine-toothed comb, it could be a bad 
controller in there doing something mean.


Hope this helps someone at some future date...
- Josh

Re: shell accounts [was RE: strangest systems I've sent email from]

[John Willis]

On Thursday, April 21, 2016, Tony Aiuto  wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 1:45 PM, John Willis  >
> wrote:
>
> > >
> > > > That's another thing I remember and miss from those days... your
> > average
> > > > ISP would provide NNTP and UNIX shell accounts, as well as a few megs
> > of
> > > > space to put up a personal web site in ~/public_html.
> > >
> > > I still read Usenet newsgroups via GNUS under Emacs on my shell account
> > on
> > > Panix, an ISP located in Manhattan, and have a small web site hosted
> > there
> > > as well:
> > >
> > >http://www.panix.com/~alderson/index.html
> > >
> > > Some things are too important to relegate to a web browser.
> >
>
> Actually, I don't get this discussion at all. I had a panix account years
> ago.About the same time I ran a FULL suite of servers in my basement, DNS,
> STMP, HTTP & mailman. Then I realized that was just because I *could*,
> rather than I needed to or because it served any interesting historical
> purpose. I switched it all to outsourced services and never looked back.


Good for you? I enjoy doing those things, and don't see what would give you
a reason to belittle someone who enjoys doing something else.


>
> The bottom line is that what i really care about is the beauty of old
> hardware and the elegance of software that had to run in that limited
> environment. The speed/cost/accuracy tradeoff is the essence of software
> engineering. If I read information about it with Lynx rather than a modern
> browser, I only penalize myself. I reduce my bandwidth for some abstract
> notion of "purity".


I don't think anyone suggested anything like this... I use a number of
highly modern machines every day.


>
> Look at it this way. Archeologists care about history, but they are smart
> enough to realize they don't have to write their papers in charcoal on cave
> walls. Do not conflate the subject matter with the medium to talk about it.


So retro internet is less valid as a focus of hobbyist enthusiasm than
retro computers? I enjoy both, as well as modern computing.

I love ancient hardware, and I will use the best tools I have available to
> talk about it. Limiting myself to shell accounts and elm as a mail reader
> misses the point. We *live* in 2016. We talk about 1970. Using technology
> from 1990 is neither historically accurate, nor useful.


How is it historically inaccurate for me to use 1990s technology to relive
the times when I was first getting into computers to begin with? Again, I
enjoy it, so you have no right to be a jerk and judge me for it...


>
>
> >
> > > Rich
> > >
> >
> > This gives me a thought: I run a similar (but likely much smaller) ISP in
> > my neighborhood.
> > ISPs like Panix and my own ChivaNet should come up with some common
> > branding
> > indicating that we support traditional Internet values and services. Some
> > way for enthusiasts
> > who really care about "the Internet as it was meant to be" to separate
> the
> > wheat from the
> > chaff, and be smarter about bandwidth shopping.
> >
>


-- 
*John P. Willis*
Coherent Logic Development LLC

M: 575.520.9542
O: 575.524.1034

chocolatejolli...@gmail.com
http://www.coherent-logic.com/

Re: shell accounts [was RE: strangest systems I've sent email from]

[Tony Aiuto]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 1:45 PM, John Willis 
wrote:

> >
> > > That's another thing I remember and miss from those days... your
> average
> > > ISP would provide NNTP and UNIX shell accounts, as well as a few megs
> of
> > > space to put up a personal web site in ~/public_html.
> >
> > I still read Usenet newsgroups via GNUS under Emacs on my shell account
> on
> > Panix, an ISP located in Manhattan, and have a small web site hosted
> there
> > as well:
> >
> >http://www.panix.com/~alderson/index.html
> >
> > Some things are too important to relegate to a web browser.
>

Actually, I don't get this discussion at all. I had a panix account years
ago.About the same time I ran a FULL suite of servers in my basement, DNS,
STMP, HTTP & mailman. Then I realized that was just because I *could*,
rather than I needed to or because it served any interesting historical
purpose. I switched it all to outsourced services and never looked back.

The bottom line is that what i really care about is the beauty of old
hardware and the elegance of software that had to run in that limited
environment. The speed/cost/accuracy tradeoff is the essence of software
engineering. If I read information about it with Lynx rather than a modern
browser, I only penalize myself. I reduce my bandwidth for some abstract
notion of "purity".

Look at it this way. Archeologists care about history, but they are smart
enough to realize they don't have to write their papers in charcoal on cave
walls. Do not conflate the subject matter with the medium to talk about it.
I love ancient hardware, and I will use the best tools I have available to
talk about it. Limiting myself to shell accounts and elm as a mail reader
misses the point. We *live* in 2016. We talk about 1970. Using technology
from 1990 is neither historically accurate, nor useful.


>
> > Rich
> >
>
> This gives me a thought: I run a similar (but likely much smaller) ISP in
> my neighborhood.
> ISPs like Panix and my own ChivaNet should come up with some common
> branding
> indicating that we support traditional Internet values and services. Some
> way for enthusiasts
> who really care about "the Internet as it was meant to be" to separate the
> wheat from the
> chaff, and be smarter about bandwidth shopping.
>

Re: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer

[Paul Koning]

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 7:33 PM, Chuck Guzis  wrote:
> 
> ...
>> Neat.  PLATO made extensive use of ECS, swapping per-terminal state
>> and programs in and out of ECS for fast interactive service.  ECS was
>> also where most I/O buffers went, with PPUs doing disk and terminal
>> I/O from/to ECS rather than central memory.  A dual mainframe 6500
>> system (4 "unified" processors total) did a decent job supporting 600
>> concurrent logged-in terminals, out of a total of 1008 connected.
>> That was around 1977 when I worked on that system at the U of
>> Illinois.
> 
> Was that UIUC?  I processed some CYBER tapes from there a couple of
> years ago--there's an archivist there who uses us to retrieve contents
> of various dusty items.

Yup.  A couple of us helped put the PLATO copy running on the DtCyber emulator 
together, see cyber1.org.

paul

Re: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer

[Paul Koning]

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 5:01 PM, Rich Alderson  
> wrote:
> 
> From: Paul Koning
> Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2016 11:48 AM
> 
>> I don't think there are any Cyber 70 (CDC 6000 series) systems still
>> running, but there's one in emulation, running PLATO.  See cyber1.org.
>> It even has emulated console tubes...
> 
> I can't speak to Cyber 70 systems, but the 6500 at LCM runs SCOPE, KRONOS,
> and NOS quite nicely.  Getting it to this point was a very big project.

Sorry, I was unclear, I meant production machines.  Yes, you've got yours, and 
that's quite an achievement.

> You should come visit, and talk to the principal engineer who did most of
> the work of making it run.

Not sure if I'll get to your area, but if I do, I'll plan on that.

paul

Re: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer

[Chuck Guzis]

On 04/21/2016 01:36 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
> 
>> On Apr 21, 2016, at 3:55 PM, Chuck Guzis  wrote:
>> 
>> ... Ten was a number that figured into various aspects.  The clock
>> was nomially 10 MHz;
> 
> In serial numbers 1-7 only nominally -- the clock was a ring
> oscillator, tuned by tweaking wire lengths.  Starting with serial
> number 8, there's a crystal oscillator (in the ECS controller if ECS
> is present, otherwise in the CPU).

Yup, that's why I used the word "nominally".  The clock distribution
circuitry in the 6600 was a study all by itself.   Mike Miller said that
his first job right out of school was measuring the various loops on the
back of the machine at Chippewa Falls to which Seymour had attached tags
that simply said "tune".

> I thought the 70 series (6000 series) was 131 kW max because the top
> bit is the "ECS active" bit.  170 series makes it 262k.

IIRC, the SCOPE aka. NOS/BE team at SVLOPS didn't have access to a real
operational 170, so a 70 was jerry-rigged by the CEs there for
development purposes.   There was a lot of weird stuff at one time in
Sunnyvale.  We had the only extant STAR 1-Bs for a time, for
example--mostly held together with chewing gum and baling wire, it
seemed.  Took hours to compile a kernel--if the machines stayed up that
long.

> Neat.  PLATO made extensive use of ECS, swapping per-terminal state
> and programs in and out of ECS for fast interactive service.  ECS was
> also where most I/O buffers went, with PPUs doing disk and terminal
> I/O from/to ECS rather than central memory.  A dual mainframe 6500
> system (4 "unified" processors total) did a decent job supporting 600
> concurrent logged-in terminals, out of a total of 1008 connected.
> That was around 1977 when I worked on that system at the U of
> Illinois.

Was that UIUC?  I processed some CYBER tapes from there a couple of
years ago--there's an archivist there who uses us to retrieve contents
of various dusty items.

--Chuck

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Al Kossow]

On 4/21/16 12:38 PM, Kyle Owen wrote:

> I'd be happy to dump the microcode/PROMs when I get some time, perhaps over
> the summer.
> 
> Kyle
> 

thanks. I just saw the panels, so I'll pull them out for pics

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Paul Berger]

On 2016-04-21 7:29 PM, Dave Wade wrote:



-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Guy
Sotomayor
Sent: 21 April 2016 22:39
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
Subject: Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re:
SGI ONYX



On Apr 21, 2016, at 2:35 PM, Josh Dersch  wrote:

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Ali  wrote:


Actually, the first one was called XT/370 because it plugged into an
XT!
Then came AT/370.  Those were obviously ISA boards.  Then came some
variants that were microchannel.  The final iterations were PCI based.


Guy,

I am not sure about the other systems but my understanding of the
XT/370 and AT/370 was that they were glorified terminals i.e. instead
of having a terminal and a PC on your desk you could have it all in one. Is

this wrong?

I think you're thinking of the 3270 PC  and 3270 AT, which was pretty
much what you described here…

The XT/370 and AT/370 had coprocessor boards that allowed 370 code (and a
heavily modified version of VM/370) to be run on the machine itself.  They
were

I don't think the CMS was "heavily" modified, modified certainly, but heavily 
modified I don't think so...



*not* just glorified terminals.  ;-)

TTFN - Guy


The CMS probably was not modified much but the VM underneath it was.  
CMS is just the single user client OS that is commonly what people see 
when they log onto "VM".  But VM is really a virtualisation manager  
that can run a number of guest operating systems, but in the case of the 
XT and AT 370 it seems to me it only supported  a single CMS session.


Paul.

Re: Using a Gotek-type flash floppy emulator inside a C1581

[drlegendre .]

Have you tried the #c-64 channel on ircnet? It's fairly well-populated,
with a lot of knowledgeable folks and demo-scene types around. I'm sure
someone there can assist you with the specifics.

I for one have never involved myself in the SD / IEC stuff. I seem to do
just fine with emulators and PC-side tools like cbm4linux (or cbm4win) and
DroiD64.

DroiD64 is an excellent cross-platform Java tool for working with .d64 and
other CBM disk image formats. Tried it?

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 1:52 PM, Eric Christopherson <
echristopher...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I wonder if there are any Commodore people out here who could tell me what
> practical differences would result from using a Gotek-type
> flash-memory-based floppy emulator in place of the C1581's mechanism, vs.
> using Jim Brain's uIEC-SD or similar.
>
> I don't know if the thing would even work in a 1581 case, or if Commodore
> DOS or JiffyDOS would work with it; but if so, I wonder if the DOS would
> work slightly more like the real thing, because it would be actual
> C=/JiffyDOS running on an actual 6502, instead of something new running on
> a microcontroller. I understand that you wouldn't get any of the
> directory-changing commands et al. from the SD2IEC firmware.
>
> --
> Eric Christopherson
>

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, Guy Sotomayor wrote:

> 3270 terminals are what are termed CUT terminals (can?t remember what the
> acronym means) but were connected to a controller via coax.

Ah okay. Someone told me that the voltage on those was enough to feel/shock
you. Was that true, or just a myth ?

> The terminals are ?page mode?.  Basically all of the editing on the screen
> is done locally and then when an ?attention?  key is pressed the
> controller can request the contents of the screen.

Ah, so there was some electrical signaling going on to the terminal
controller and that couldn't be done in sofware, if I'm understanding you
correctly.  Hmm, considering all the limitations at the time, it's seems
like that whole 'buffer <-> forward <-> update' mechanism isn't a bad idea.

> With the advent of TCP/IP on the 370/390/zSeries machines (both HW and SW)
> most physical 3270 terminals have gone away to be replaced by TN3270.

Ah, okay and this is where software emulation became an option, I take it. 
I had to look up the "TN" part, I didn't find anything solid, but from 
some Wikipedia chatter I take it to mean "TelNet". Also guessing they 
created some out-of-band channel to send all the stuff that used to rely 
on electrical signaling.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to explain that. 

-Swift

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Paul Berger]

On 2016-04-21 6:53 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, Paul Berger wrote:

No the 3270 PC and 3270 AT where a special configuration for 3270 terminal
emulation it conatined a special keyboard with more keys that the normal
keyboard and connected to a special adapter card in the system.

I never understood the dynamics of 3720 emulation.  Was it *just* a terminal
emulation protocol ala vt100 ?  The main thing that confused me was the
existence of these emulation cards that folks are mentioning.  I remember
seeing "3270 boards" (as folks in the know gestured at them).  They appeared
to run on some kind of twinax, IIRC (been a while and I was probably 14
years old).  Were these extra keys on the keyboard the cruxt of the issue ?
ie..  the card was there so you could use a "real" 3270 keyboard ?
The cards handled the communication protocol between the control unit 
and the terminal as well as having the appropriate line driver and 
receiver.  The 3270 system used coax, I think you are thinking of 5250 
emulation when you mention twinax.  5250 emulation was used to to 
connect to SS/34, S/36, S/38 and As/400.  The 3270 or 5250 emulation 
card is just the adapter card that is appropriate for the connection 
just like you would use a RS-232 adapter to emulate a VT100, but these 
cards also handle all of the protocol where as for most serial terminal 
emulation most of the protocol would be handled by software.  There was 
also 3270 terminal emulation that connected via a BiSync or SDLC adapter 
card as well.   Yes I understand "a while ago"  it has been at least 20 
years since I have seen any of these machines.  Yes the extra keys on 
the extra keys on the keyboard gave you a layout much like the later 
3270 system keyboards, but not like the 3275,6,7,8, and 9 which had 
considerably fewer keys.The display was also a high quality display 
and it was likely attached to a special display adapter, since it could 
support the 3270 system vector graphics, but I don't recall what the 
used for display adapters.




Why did folks install those boards just to run "3720 emulation" ? Couldn't
they have just bought something like Reflections and done it all in
software ? Can someone school me and tell me what I'm missing about these
boards or 3270 in general. I know little of IBM mainframes, obviously. I'm a
Unix zealot, so that figures, but I'm still curious about them. Thanks!
Yeah me too now after supporting UNIX system for more than 25 years, but 
I am more a hardware person than software, but I started out fixing 3270 
terminals as well as other IBM terminal products that connected to 
mainframes.


-Swift

Paul.

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Guy Sotomayor]

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 2:53 PM, Swift Griggs  wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, Paul Berger wrote:
>> No the 3270 PC and 3270 AT where a special configuration for 3270 terminal
>> emulation it conatined a special keyboard with more keys that the normal
>> keyboard and connected to a special adapter card in the system.
> 
> I never understood the dynamics of 3720 emulation.  Was it *just* a terminal
> emulation protocol ala vt100 ?  The main thing that confused me was the
> existence of these emulation cards that folks are mentioning.  I remember
> seeing "3270 boards" (as folks in the know gestured at them).  They appeared
> to run on some kind of twinax, IIRC (been a while and I was probably 14
> years old).  Were these extra keys on the keyboard the cruxt of the issue ? 
> ie..  the card was there so you could use a "real" 3270 keyboard ?
> 
> Why did folks install those boards just to run "3720 emulation" ? Couldn't
> they have just bought something like Reflections and done it all in
> software ? Can someone school me and tell me what I'm missing about these
> boards or 3270 in general. I know little of IBM mainframes, obviously. I'm a
> Unix zealot, so that figures, but I'm still curious about them. Thanks! 
> 
3270 terminals are what are termed CUT terminals (can’t remember what
the acronym means) but were connected to a controller via coax.  The
terminals are “page mode”.  Basically all of the editing on the screen is done
locally and then when an “attention” key is pressed the controller can request
the contents of the screen.  This is a *very* abbreviated version of how they
work.

The 3270 emulators that ran on PCs required a 3270 board.  That provided
the connectivity to the terminal controller (something like a 3274 or 3174).
The PC handled all of the screen management and protocol interactions
required by the the 3270 protocol.

Because most of the editing was done locally a mainframe could handle
100’s of interactive terminals without a lot of horsepower since they only
saw interactions when an “attention” key was pressed.

With the advent of TCP/IP on the 370/390/zSeries machines (both HW
and SW) most physical 3270 terminals have gone away to be replaced
by TN3270.

TTFN - Guy

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Guy Sotomayor]

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 2:44 PM, Paul Berger  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> There was definitely a XT/370 and likely an AT/370 as well the processor on 
> the the 370 card in these machines was rumoured to be a modified Motorola 68K 
> with special microcode to execute 370 instructions.  These machines ran a 
> modified version of VM.

It was more than a rumor.  If I recall, there was an article about it in the 
IBM Systems Journal.

> 
> The 9371 system used PS/2 mod 80 system boards for I/O processors and had a 
> microchannel card sandwich in them that was the 370 processor, I do not 
> believe they could run MVS but they could run VM and VSE.

I recall seeing a few of the prototypes in one of our labs in Boca.  We had 
them because the I/O was SCSI and we were doing the cached microchannel SCSI 
cards (they weren’t specific to the 9371).  I did the AIX PS/2 drivers for 
those cards.

TTFN - Guy

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, Paul Berger wrote:
> No the 3270 PC and 3270 AT where a special configuration for 3270 terminal
> emulation it conatined a special keyboard with more keys that the normal
> keyboard and connected to a special adapter card in the system.

I never understood the dynamics of 3720 emulation.  Was it *just* a terminal
emulation protocol ala vt100 ?  The main thing that confused me was the
existence of these emulation cards that folks are mentioning.  I remember
seeing "3270 boards" (as folks in the know gestured at them).  They appeared
to run on some kind of twinax, IIRC (been a while and I was probably 14
years old).  Were these extra keys on the keyboard the cruxt of the issue ? 
ie..  the card was there so you could use a "real" 3270 keyboard ?

Why did folks install those boards just to run "3720 emulation" ? Couldn't
they have just bought something like Reflections and done it all in
software ? Can someone school me and tell me what I'm missing about these
boards or 3270 in general. I know little of IBM mainframes, obviously. I'm a
Unix zealot, so that figures, but I'm still curious about them. Thanks! 

-Swift

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Paul Berger]

On 2016-04-21 6:35 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Ali  wrote:


Actually, the first one was called XT/370 because it plugged into an
XT!
Then came AT/370.  Those were obviously ISA boards.  Then came some
variants that were microchannel.  The final iterations were PCI based.


Guy,

I am not sure about the other systems but my understanding of the XT/370
and AT/370 was that they were glorified terminals i.e. instead of having a
terminal and a PC on your desk you could have it all in one. Is this wrong?


I think you're thinking of the 3270 PC  and 3270 AT, which was pretty much
what you described here...

- Josh

No the 3270 PC and 3270 AT where a special configuration for 3270 
terminal emulation it conatined a special keyboard with more keys that 
the normal keyboard and connected to a special adapter card in the 
system.  These machines also had a different display and of course came 
with a 3270 emulation adapter.


There was definitely a XT/370 and likely an AT/370 as well the processor 
on the the 370 card in these machines was rumoured to be a modified 
Motorola 68K with special microcode to execute 370 instructions.  These 
machines ran a modified version of VM.


The 9371 system used PS/2 mod 80 system boards for I/O processors and 
had a microchannel card sandwich in them that was the 370 processor, I 
do not believe they could run MVS but they could run VM and VSE.


Paul.

RE: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Ali]

> 
> I think you're thinking of the 3270 PC  and 3270 AT, which was pretty
> much what you described here...
> 
> - Josh

Josh, 

So I am. Thanks for the clarification. BTW: for those wanting more info on the 
AT/370 here is a good link to some IBM brochures - 
http://typewritten.org/Articles/IBM/g520-5087-1.pdf.


-Ali

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Guy Sotomayor]

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 2:35 PM, Josh Dersch  wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Ali  wrote:
> 
>>> Actually, the first one was called XT/370 because it plugged into an
>>> XT!
>>> Then came AT/370.  Those were obviously ISA boards.  Then came some
>>> variants that were microchannel.  The final iterations were PCI based.
>>> 
>> 
>> Guy,
>> 
>> I am not sure about the other systems but my understanding of the XT/370
>> and AT/370 was that they were glorified terminals i.e. instead of having a
>> terminal and a PC on your desk you could have it all in one. Is this wrong?
>> 
> 
> I think you're thinking of the 3270 PC  and 3270 AT, which was pretty much
> what you described here…

The XT/370 and AT/370 had coprocessor boards that allowed 370 code (and a
heavily modified version of VM/370) to be run on the machine itself.  They were
*not* just glorified terminals.  ;-)

TTFN - Guy

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Josh Dersch]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Ali  wrote:

> > Actually, the first one was called XT/370 because it plugged into an
> > XT!
> > Then came AT/370.  Those were obviously ISA boards.  Then came some
> > variants that were microchannel.  The final iterations were PCI based.
> >
>
> Guy,
>
> I am not sure about the other systems but my understanding of the XT/370
> and AT/370 was that they were glorified terminals i.e. instead of having a
> terminal and a PC on your desk you could have it all in one. Is this wrong?
>

I think you're thinking of the 3270 PC  and 3270 AT, which was pretty much
what you described here...

- Josh


>
> -Ali
>
>

RE: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Ali]

> Actually, the first one was called XT/370 because it plugged into an
> XT!
> Then came AT/370.  Those were obviously ISA boards.  Then came some
> variants that were microchannel.  The final iterations were PCI based.
> 

Guy,

I am not sure about the other systems but my understanding of the XT/370 and 
AT/370 was that they were glorified terminals i.e. instead of having a terminal 
and a PC on your desk you could have it all in one. Is this wrong?

-Ali

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Guy Sotomayor]

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 2:13 PM, Swift Griggs  wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
>> Let?s not also forget the various 370 and 390 co-processor boards that
>> could be put into PC?s at various times to allow one to turn the PC into a
>> small mainframe capable of running mainframe software (including the OS).
> 
> I can't forget because I never knew that!  I'm not always that interested in
> IBM 3x0 systems, but that's a really cool concept.  I'm guessing they were
> microchannel boards that plugged into the IBM PS/2 line ?  I can't believe
> IBM would have let you run them on any old PC (given the clone wars at the
> time).  That blows my mind.
> 

Actually, the first one was called XT/370 because it plugged into an XT!
Then came AT/370.  Those were obviously ISA boards.  Then came some
variants that were microchannel.  The final iterations were PCI based.

The microchannel and PCI based boards went into systems that ran OS/2
or AIX (P/390 and R/390 respectively).

IBM didn’t sell the boards separately from the system (ie they delivered all of
the HW).  There were also various licenses (uCode for the 390 board and
various drivers for AIX (RS/6000 only) and OS/2.  And then of course there
was the OS that you had to license from IBM (which generally was about the
same cost as the HW…I think the base OS/390 was ~$28,000 (that’s just the
OS folks…you still needed the HW).

TTFN - Guy

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Josh Dersch]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 2:22 PM, Noel Chiappa 
wrote:

> > From: Josh Dersch
>
> > It's actually a SCSI device the size of a refrigerator.
>
> Given all the largish machines you have, you must have either i) a
> warehouse,
> or ii) a very large basement and a tolerant SO! :-)
>
> Noel
>

iii) A large-ish basment, a *very* tolerant SO and absolutely no free space
:).

- Josh

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Josh Dersch

> It's actually a SCSI device the size of a refrigerator. 

Given all the largish machines you have, you must have either i) a warehouse,
or ii) a very large basement and a tolerant SO! :-)

Noel

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
> Let?s not also forget the various 370 and 390 co-processor boards that
> could be put into PC?s at various times to allow one to turn the PC into a
> small mainframe capable of running mainframe software (including the OS).

I can't forget because I never knew that!  I'm not always that interested in
IBM 3x0 systems, but that's a really cool concept.  I'm guessing they were
microchannel boards that plugged into the IBM PS/2 line ?  I can't believe
IBM would have let you run them on any old PC (given the clone wars at the
time).  That blows my mind.

I always thought it'd be cool to be able to extend a standard SGI system
with a compute brick from an Origin.  In some ways you could use a craylink
setup to get close, but nothing as cool as an add-in board for a whole
'nother platform. 

-Swift

RE: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer

[Rich Alderson]

From: Paul Koning
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2016 11:48 AM

> I don't think there are any Cyber 70 (CDC 6000 series) systems still
> running, but there's one in emulation, running PLATO.  See cyber1.org.
> It even has emulated console tubes...

I can't speak to Cyber 70 systems, but the 6500 at LCM runs SCOPE, KRONOS,
and NOS quite nicely.  Getting it to this point was a very big project.

You should come visit, and talk to the principal engineer who did most of
the work of making it run.

Rich


Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

mailto:ri...@livingcomputermuseum.org

http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

Re: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer

[Paul Koning]

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 3:55 PM, Chuck Guzis  wrote:
> 
> ...
> Ten was a number that figured into various aspects.  The clock was
> nomially 10 MHz;

In serial numbers 1-7 only nominally -- the clock was a ring oscillator, tuned 
by tweaking wire lengths.  Starting with serial number 8, there's a crystal 
oscillator (in the ECS controller if ECS is present, otherwise in the CPU).

> ...
> Initially, the maximum central memory size was 131KW; late in the
> series, a 262KW option was added, necessitating extensive code changes,

I thought the 70 series (6000 series) was 131 kW max because the top bit is the 
"ECS active" bit.  170 series makes it 262k.
> ...
> For a couple of years, I worked on the development a system using up to
> 4 CPUs with a common 4MW of bulk core (ECS).  Since ECS transfers, after
> an initial startup overhead ran at full memory speed, a model was
> contrived that divided programs up into modules to create "chains", with
> inter-module communication, each module resident in either ECS or in a
> CPU. 

Neat.  PLATO made extensive use of ECS, swapping per-terminal state and 
programs in and out of ECS for fast interactive service.  ECS was also where 
most I/O buffers went, with PPUs doing disk and terminal I/O from/to ECS rather 
than central memory.  A dual mainframe 6500 system (4 "unified" processors 
total) did a decent job supporting 600 concurrent logged-in terminals, out of a 
total of 1008 connected.  That was around 1977 when I worked on that system at 
the U of Illinois.

paul

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Guy Sotomayor]

There was also an 80286 coprocessor board for various VAXen.

Let’s not also forget the various 370 and 390 co-processor boards that could be
put into PC’s at various times to allow one to turn the PC into a small 
mainframe
capable of running mainframe software (including the OS).

TTFN - Guy

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 1:18 PM, Chuck Guzis  wrote:
> 
> Would the Palantir 68K ISA OCR boards be considered as high-performance?
> There was also, IIRC, a NSC 32016 board made by someone.
> 
> --Chuck
> 

Re: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer

[Chuck Guzis]

On 04/21/2016 11:04 AM, Rick Bensene wrote:

> I think that you were remembering the console of one of the Control
> Data 6000/Cyber-70 series computers that you may have seen somewhere.
> This series of Control Data machines were famous for their consoles
> with two large, round, green-phosphor monitors that used vector
> drawn-characters (generated by one of the Peripheral Processors).
> Most of the normal system screens were all text, but there were some
> special programs written (including a nice graphical chess game, a
> little program that would put up eyes on the screens that would look
> around and blink, and some others that don't come to mind at the
> moment.

You forgot BAT - the baseball game.  Chess 3.0 used the display, but I
believe that the pieces and board were formed from characters.

During my tenure at CDC SSD, I wrote quite a bit of CP and PP code for
these beasts.  The 6000 series systems were recognizable as simple beige
and gray cabinetry.  The CYBERs are more wood-grain and blue glass.

As I recall the systems numbering from low to high end:

CYBER 72 - 1 CYBER 73 CPU with extra "wait" states, mostly as a
marketing gimmick to sell at a lower price than the 73.  Most CEs knew
how to disable the slowdown, but were told in no uncertain terms that
doing so for a customer was a capital offense and would not be tolerated.

6400 = CYBER 73- Jim Thorton-designed "plain" CPU; unified
arithmetic/logical unit, no instruction "stack".  Timing very
straightforward to calculate.

6500 = two 6400 CPUs in the same box, only one of which could be in
monitor/supervisor mode at any time.  Shared memory.

6600 = CYBER 74 - Seymour Cray's multiple funcitonal unit CPU, with a
primitive instruction cache and scheduler.

6700 = one 6600 CPU and one 6400 CPU in the same box, shared memory.

6415 -  a 6400 with missing PPUs and minimum central memory--which
really had to be a marketing gimmick, since the only thing that really
defined a PPU was a couple of registers, channel interface and a 4KW
core module--the rest of the logic was time-shared by all PPUs.

There were other oddball QSEs, extra PPU versions, etc.  I've been told
that S/N 1 6600 gave different floating-point results from subsequent
systems.

Ten was a number that figured into various aspects.  The clock was
nomially 10 MHz; a minor cycle was therefore 100 nsec and a major cycle
1 usec.  Each central memory word was 60 bits, holding 10 6-bit
characters.  As mentioned, there were 10 PPUs, with 12-bit memory
words, so 5 PPU words comprised on CPU word.

Initially, the maximum central memory size was 131KW; late in the
series, a 262KW option was added, necessitating extensive code changes,
as some code treated the 18-bit addresses as signed quantities, not
unsigned.  Arithmetic was ones' complement.

User programs occupied contiguous memory; an individual user had an
"exchange package" that reflected its register contents as well as field
length and relocation address. Context changes were performed by an
"exchange jump" instruction initiated from either any PPU or the CPU (if
the CEJ option was installed).  It swapped the contents of the exchange
package with the working registers.

What was surprising is how long the architecture lasted well into the
1980s, given the non-paging/non segmented memory management and oddball
word size.

For a couple of years, I worked on the development a system using up to
4 CPUs with a common 4MW of bulk core (ECS).  Since ECS transfers, after
an initial startup overhead ran at full memory speed, a model was
contrived that divided programs up into modules to create "chains", with
inter-module communication, each module resident in either ECS or in a
CPU.  The idea is that you could swap a module in where resources were
available.  Modules did not talk to PPUs as was the case for normal
programs, but rather to a per-CPU I/O supervisor, which then
communicated with PPUs.

All this to get a realtime transaction-oriented facility implemented on
a system that was designed for batch processing.  It was
interesting--and sadly, lost in the sands of time.

--Chuck

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Chuck Guzis]

Would the Palantir 68K ISA OCR boards be considered as high-performance?
 There was also, IIRC, a NSC 32016 board made by someone.

--Chuck

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Josh Dersch]

On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 8:27 PM, Toby Thain 
wrote:

> On 2016-04-20 11:10 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
>
>> ...
>> Ok, this one's from the 70s, and it's a large, external unit rather than
>> a single board, but I have a Floating Point Systems AP-120B, essentially
>> an array processor for fast floating point operations. There's a bit of
>> information here:
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPS_AP-120B
>>
>
> Impressive! I guess documentation would be quite a challenge.
>

There are docs on Bitsavers, at least for programming it.  Not enough
information to build the interface to the host machine, though.

I also have an AMT DAP 610 (similar to this:
http://www.computermuseum.org.uk/fixed_pages/AMT_DAP.html only with 64x64
processors instead of a mere (hah) 32x32).

It's actually a SCSI device the size of a refrigerator.  I have it hooked
to a Sun IPX because I find the size differential between host and
coprocessor to be amusing.  It's currently running, but I haven't yet spent
too much time learning AMT's parallel FORTRAN variant to do anything fun
with it.  It renders the Mandelbrot set in full color quite quickly,
though.  (And now that the weather's heating up, I've missed my window for
running it for any period of time :))


>
> It seems like the sort of thing you'd want to do ray tracing on in the
> TRON (1983) era. I wonder if there were CGI users of it.


A cursory search doesn't reveal any uses in CGI (but I agree it would be
suited for it), but there were a good number of applications in image
processing.

- Josh



>
>
> --Toby
>
>
>
>
>> I'd love to get it running one of these days, just need +5V at 100A and
>> a set of interface boards for a PDP-11...
>>
>> - Josh
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[ethan]

I used to have this thing called a MasPar MP-2. It hung from a Decstation 
5000 IIRC. Had the whole system, but the PSU in the MasPar box went bad. 
Sold it to someone in Florida IIRC.


--
Ethan O'Toole

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Kyle Owen]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Al Kossow  wrote:

>
> I have two front panels for a similar system.
>

Think you could take some pictures? The lone picture I have of the H800
isn't a close-up of the panel, and I'd very much like to see what it looks
like up close.

It is a 24-bit mini. Docs are on bitsavers. Started out as a company called
> Datacraft before Harris bought them.
>

Huh, sure enough. Many of its registers are 24-bit, but the memory is
48-bits wide. A "super-minicomputer", they claimed.

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/harris/0830007-000_Series_800_Reference_Man_Aug79.pdf

I'd be happy to dump the microcode/PROMs when I get some time, perhaps over
the summer.

Kyle

Re: strangest systems I've sent email from

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, John Willis wrote:
> I loved being able to do finger @host and then use talk to chat with other
> people.

Me, too!  That was a great feature.  I'd finger '@' some server that my
classmates used and then use talk or ytalk to figure out how to do our
homework etc...  People who didn't want to participate could just turn off
talk requests.

> IMNSHO, the real promise of the Internet as envisioned by Cerf, Postel,
> et.  al.  was in the purity of the end-to-end networking connectivity,
> where your personal machine is a node equal in stature to minis, mid, and
> mainframes also participating:

Well said.  I feel the same way.  First class servers talking with other
first-class servers.  This has been lost, now.  If you want to "run a
server" your ISP hears a cash register opening and you'll need a "business"
account.  It's so far away from the vision you describe well.

> i.e., you have a real, meaningful address that can not only reach, but be
> reached.

It's so important.  Most people didn't feel the loss, but guys like you and
I won't let go of that vision so easily (for all the good it does us). 
However, they are *memories* now, and that's sad.  It's like remembering a
great oak circle in an old growth forest before they cut it down to put up
condos and a Starbucks.  Folks who live there love the Starbucks, and would
recoil in horror at the idea of letting it all go...  but we remember.

> Of course, the prevalence of dial-up connectivity in those days somewhat
> precluded this, but with a shell account, you could get close.

Yes, exactly.  "Back in the day" I felt like nothing would ever be "lost" on
the Internet.  As bandwidth and storage got cheap, I figured access would
increase, not decrease.  Now, I'm noticing that *plenty* of stuff is getting
lost.  I'll admit I even cringed when I saw Geocities dying.  Yeah it was a
cheesy service but, for example, I have a friend who is a master gunsmith
and put all kinds of excellent info on a site he made.  Now it's gone and
you can't find that some of that info via a search anymore at all.  That
phenomenon seems to be picking up speed.  It reminds me a bit of a book I
read called "The Media Monopoly" by Ben Bagdikian.  He talks about how even
small towns used to have 2-3 newspapers with local news.  Now they have none
and the regional big-city paper only spouts syndicated news.  So, I guess I
was naive.  More money and resources pouring into something don't mean
better access to the "consumer".

> Once broadband took off, with always-on connectivity, this should have
> been mitigated--but alas, IPv4 depletion and that demonic invention called
> NAT screwed it up all over again.

I've often thought the same thing, but now I wonder.  Is it NAT keeping
everyone suppressed behind dynamic translation or is it more that 80% of the
people on the net are just consuming media and since they don't clamor for
equal "real" IP access, the ISPs simply don't care about that. 

> Of course, if class A and B address blocks weren't handed out like candy
> to children in the early days, IPv4 might have lasted longer.  But that's
> a whole other discussion.

I still hate Network Solutions and all the NICs for that, too.  However, it
was bound to happen one way or another.  The math (internet population to
ipv4 availability) doesn't work.  So, I guess I should get over it.

> IPv6 _should_ fix this, but trusting the telcos and tier 1 providers to
> not screw up the transition is tantamount to an ardent belief in bigfoot,
> the Loch Ness monster, and cold fusion.

I used to give presentations on IPv6.  My talk was very skeptical of the
potential it promises and even more suspicious of all the QoS features that
look awfully like what corporates want to make sure "free" content is
basically slow and useless.  I used to have a healthy dose of fear that IPv6
would make the situation a bit worse because of how ISPs would use the
internal features.  

However, nowadays despite all kinds of pronouncements from Cisco and other
network "geniuses" that "we have to do it!  There is no choice!  It's coming
tomorrow.  It's already widespread!" If I had a BS flag I'd throw it.  The
proof of their consummate failure to get IPv6 into any kind of widespread use
is very evident to those who look. 

There is a discussion of this on Reddit that pretty well hits the mark. 
Even the pro-ipv6 folks say things like "Oh come on, I've been running it
for years [dual stack] and we have 25% of our users on it already!  It's not
a failure" Oh Ohkhay.

https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/2w5u9o/biggest_failure_in_it_ipv6/

> IMO, bandwidth should be bandwidth: it's none of the ISP's business which
> direction it goes in or what I'm using it for (as long as it's legal). 

Remember the old cry of "Information wants to be free!" ?  It still rings
true  in the wilderness.

> This is why I pay in excess of $300/month for a T1 line and a /27, as well
> as ADSL with a /28 (from 

Using a Gotek-type flash floppy emulator inside a C1581

[Eric Christopherson]

I wonder if there are any Commodore people out here who could tell me what
practical differences would result from using a Gotek-type
flash-memory-based floppy emulator in place of the C1581's mechanism, vs.
using Jim Brain's uIEC-SD or similar.

I don't know if the thing would even work in a 1581 case, or if Commodore
DOS or JiffyDOS would work with it; but if so, I wonder if the DOS would
work slightly more like the real thing, because it would be actual
C=/JiffyDOS running on an actual 6502, instead of something new running on
a microcontroller. I understand that you wouldn't get any of the
directory-changing commands et al. from the SD2IEC firmware.

-- 
Eric Christopherson

Re: CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer

[Paul Koning]

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 2:04 PM, Rick Bensene  wrote:
> 
> ...
> The machine was an all-transistor design, based on the CDC 6600
> processor.  It was liquid cooled, and had a large cooler unit that sat
> with the machine that cooled the coolant (water) and circulated it
> through the chassis, venting  the heat (which was substantial) through a
> special venting system.  I remember the CDC Field guys talking about
> horror stories when there were leaks in the cooling system.  We never
> had any problems while I was there.

Rick,

Nice memories, thanks for posting that.  I don't think there are any Cyber 70 
(CDC 6000 series) systems still running, but there's one in emulation, running 
PLATO.  See cyber1.org.  It even has emulated console tubes...

The machine itself was cooled with Freon (the non-PC flavor).  The chilled 
water you're referring to would take heat away from the Freon cooling system 
compressors (at the end of each of the CPU cabinets).

> One day I was at the console when one of the big high-voltage rectifier
> tubes that were in the console decided to short.
> I was watching one of the system monitor displays, and suddenly I saw
> the display collapse into a single very bright horizontal line.  I noted
> that the other display also did the same thing.   I also heard a funny
> noise that sounded kind of scary, so I started to push my wheeled chair
> away from the console, but not soon enough to avoid a shower of sparks
> and even some molten metal that spewed out from the console. 

Yikes.  I think the rectifiers were solid state.  But the deflection amplifiers 
used high power triodes (3CX100A5) as the final amplifier stage, running around 
3 kV anode voltage.  If something goes wrong with those, sparks would 
definitely be a possibility.  And you'd expect to see a line (horizontal or 
vertical).

paul

RE: strangest systems I've sent email from

[Dave Wade]

Well the first E-Mail I sent was from a Honeywell L66/60 running GCOS and
TSS sometime around 1985. Aberdeen University had written a "Greybook"
mailer in "B". Greybook was basically RFC822 e-mail with three
modifications: -

1. It used revered "big endian" names, so "uk.ac.nerc" as opposed to the
modern "nerc.ac.uk".
2. It allowed "BST" or "British Summer Time" as a time zone.
3. It ran over the "Yellow Book Transport Service" which in turn ran over an
x.25 network.

The required an X.25 link which was provided by a PDP/11 running RSX11M.
This connected to the L66 via a Synchronous line. I don't honestly remember
how this worked on the Honeywell. The e-mails could be sent to several UK
Universities over the Janet X.25 network. We could also send to Bitnet using
a gateway which I think was at UCL. There is some information about the
state of E-Mail here:-

http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ccd/networking/bryant/p05.htm

I was the system programmer who installed and maintained the software from
Aberdeen. Later on I installed similar software on an IBM4381 and went on to
work on the IBM implementation for Salford University, who wrote it
initially at IBM's Manchester office on a 4361 and later in Salford
University on IBM kit loaned to use...


Dave Wade
G4UGM

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Al Kossow]

On 4/20/16 11:07 PM, Raymond Wiker wrote:

> I was a bit surprised to see that it used 2901 with a date code of 1985 -
> the 2901 was introduced 10 years before.
> 

I designed a microcoded 12-bit graphics processor in 1985 using them. They
were the thing to use until CMOS bit-slices came out (actually, there was a 
29C01)

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Al Kossow]

On 4/20/16 9:21 PM, Kyle Owen wrote:
> I seem to have acquired a few boards from a decommissioned system.

it also would be a good thing to dump proms/microcode from them.

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Al Kossow]

On 4/20/16 9:21 PM, Kyle Owen wrote:
> I seem to have acquired a few boards from a decommissioned system. Don't
> know what I'll do with these for now, other than maybe hang them up for
> display purposes...unless someone has one, what else can one do?
> 

I have two front panels for a similar system.

It is a 24-bit mini. Docs are on bitsavers. Started out as a company called
Datacraft before Harris bought them.

RE: strangest systems I've sent email from

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, Rich Alderson wrote:
> Yes, and if you'd actually paid attention to what they were teaching you,
> instead of whinging about commercial viability

Well, let's keep things non-personal and civil and agree to disagree.  If
you knew me better, I doubt you'd say this.  It'd just devolve into a VHS
vs Betamax (vi vs emacs?) thread anyway.  :-)

Sorry to punch on anyone's fav if you are a LISP fan.  I have bad memories 
and some fundamental problem with the language that come from my own 
negative experiences. Just write it off as a personal problem (mine).

> Tell me about having to get work done on a 12K 1401, and maybe I'll
> listen.  In the mean time, get off my lawn, kid.

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 with 2k of RAM (granted it had 
an 8-bit Z80 rather than a 1401 6-bit CPU), and I'm not whining about it.  
It was fun.

Anyhow, I'm not here to troll you or others.  Sorry if my post annoyed 
you.

-Swift

CDC 6600/Cyber 73 Memories - WAS: Harris H800 Computer

[Rick Bensene]

Mark J. Blair wrote:

> I also seem to remember an operator's console with two round CRTs on
it,
> but I might have fabricated that memory from whole cloth.
> 
I think that you were remembering the console of one of the Control Data
6000/Cyber-70 series computers that you may have seen somewhere.  This
series of Control Data machines were famous for their consoles with two
large, round, green-phosphor monitors that used vector drawn-characters
(generated by one of the Peripheral Processors).  Most of the normal
system screens were all text, but there were some special programs
written (including a nice graphical chess game, a little program that
would put up eyes on the screens that would look around and blink, and
some others that don't come to mind at the moment.

I operated one of these systems
 (a Control Data Cyber 73 --
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/cdc/cyber/brochures/Cyber70_Mod73
_Feb71.pdf) 
at Tektronix in Beaverton, Oregon, from 1977 through around 1980.   It
had two CPUs, 131K (60-bit words) of core, ECS (extended core storage),
and 20 Peripheral Processors, a combined punched card reader/punch,
something like 12 "washing machine" type  multi-platter cartridge disk
drives (that held something like 300 MB each), two 9-track tape drives
and one 7-track tape drive.   It also had a big chain printer that was
noisy, but pretty fast.  

 The machine had a channel interface to a Modcomp communications
processor (with communication maintained by one or more Peripheral
Processor programs), that provided serial I/O to terminals scattered all
over the company by some kind of serial concentrator that I can't
remember.  There was also a big modem pool for dial-in use. The
system ran a locally-modified version of the Kronos Timeshared operating
system.  The system was used primarily by engineering departments
(research and product development) for CAD and CAD software development,
circuit simulation (SPICE), cross-assembling microprocessor code, and
mathematical modeling.

The machine was an all-transistor design, based on the CDC 6600
processor.  It was liquid cooled, and had a large cooler unit that sat
with the machine that cooled the coolant (water) and circulated it
through the chassis, venting  the heat (which was substantial) through a
special venting system.  I remember the CDC Field guys talking about
horror stories when there were leaks in the cooling system.  We never
had any problems while I was there.

One day I was at the console when one of the big high-voltage rectifier
tubes that were in the console decided to short.
I was watching one of the system monitor displays, and suddenly I saw
the display collapse into a single very bright horizontal line.  I noted
that the other display also did the same thing.   I also heard a funny
noise that sounded kind of scary, so I started to push my wheeled chair
away from the console, but not soon enough to avoid a shower of sparks
and even some molten metal that spewed out from the console.   I had a
few small burns on my arms, and one little blob of molten metal burned a
hole in my pant leg.   One of the other operators in the machine room
managed to hit the power switch for the console and shut it off.  Then
the fire suppression alarm went off indicating that the Halon was going
to dump soon, so he ran back and hit the override since the sparking and
smoke had settled once the power was off.  Despite this, the fire
department showed up (the fire suppression system in the computer room
had a direct line to the fire department), and we had to tell them it
was a (semi) false alarm.

The machine kept running just fine, and we were able to keep tabs on it
with a serial terminal hooked up to the machine that had a program
running that kind of emulated the console displays.   The CDC guys were
there very quickly, and ended up having to replace two (IIRC)  big
rectifier tubes, and one burnt up power resistor.  When they powered it
up, the screens came up just as they were before the event occurred, and
all was well.   

I really enjoyed those days.   The machine was really cool, and I have a
lot of great memories of those times.
The Living Computer Museum (http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org)  in
Seattle, WA, has rescued a smaller version of a system like this based
on the 6500 processor that is undergoing restoration.  

Sorry for changing the subject (but at least I updated it in the
Subject: line).

-Rick
--
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

RE: strangest systems I've sent email from

[Rich Alderson]

From: Swift Griggs
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2016 9:11 AM

> I'm not saying everything was perfect in the 80's or 90's.  I mean, some CS
> professors in the 90's were teaching Oberon, LISP dialects, or Smalltalk.

Yes, and if you'd actually paid attention to what they were teaching you,
instead of whinging about commercial viability, you would probably be better
for it, especially the Lisp (although by the period you name, most of the fun
was gone, with Common Lisp and Scheme as the two surviving dialects).

> So, no, things were never perfect, and people had to try and do work with
> Windows for Workgroups 3.11.  :-)

Tell me about having to get work done on a 12K 1401, and maybe I'll listen.
In the mean time, get off my lawn, kid.

Rich

FTHI: ;-> ;-> ;-> ;->


Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

mailto:ri...@livingcomputermuseum.org

http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

Re: strangest systems I've sent email from

[John Willis]

>
> Yep.  I miss that too.  I used to run such an ISP in the 90's and we did
> exactly as you say.  We also ran a finger servers everywhere (and no, not
> one with a bunch of security problems).  People used to use that in cool
> ways, too (bots, cool services, vending machine interfaces, etc..).
>
>
I loved being able to do finger @host and then use talk to chat with other
people. IMNSHO, the real promise of the Internet as envisioned by Cerf,
Postel, et. al. was in the purity of the end-to-end networking connectivity,
where your personal machine is a node equal in stature to minis, mid,
and mainframes also participating: i.e., you have a real, meaningful address
that can not only reach, but be reached. Of course, the prevalence of
dial-up
connectivity in those days somewhat precluded this, but with a shell
account,
you could get close. Once broadband took off, with always-on connectivity,
this should have been mitigated--but alas, IPv4 depletion and that demonic
invention called NAT screwed it up all over again. Of course, if class A
and B
address blocks weren't handed out like candy to children in the early days,
IPv4 might have lasted longer. But that's a whole other discussion.

IPv6 _should_ fix this, but trusting the telcos and tier 1 providers to not
screw
up the transition is tantamount to an ardent belief in bigfoot, the Loch
Ness
monster, and cold fusion.

IMO, bandwidth should be bandwidth: it's none of the ISP's business which
direction it goes in or what I'm using it for (as long as it's legal). This
is why
I pay in excess of $300/month for a T1 line and a /27, as well as ADSL with
a /28 (from a local provider that doesn't care if I run "servers" or not).

I actually run a small neighborhood ISP that provides such a service, in
that
it's enthusiast-friendly, provides end-to-end connectivity, provides shell
accounts,
a gopher server, a (text-only) USENET feed, has finger and talk enabled on
the
various old servers (SunOS, HP-UX, Solaris, 4.2BSD, etc.). I also block
video
content, Facebook, and all the rather cancerous bandwidth drains of the
modern
commercial Internet.

I also miss: gopher, archie, veronica, and WAIS


> 
>
> The simple fact is that most folks are too apathetic and ignorant to care
> about such things anymore.  The Internet is a large, but still textbook
> case of what happens when you let business-weasels in on something good.
> They "monetize" it and turn it into a combination strip-mall, casino,
> theatre, porn-shop.  Of course, the Internet wouldn't be what it is
> without said weasels, (certainly not as large) but I think I'd be pretty
> okay with that.  I'd be okay without 80% of Internet traffic being video,
> too.  I guess that makes me a curmudgeon (but I've always hated TV and I
> resent the forces trying to morph the Internet into on-demand cable
> television). Yea yeah, I know I'm just peeing in the wind to say it, but
> there it is.
>
>
The downward spiral after the commercialization of the Internet was
precipitous
and alarmingly rapid: the vapidity of online exchanges quickly reached fever
pitch as more and more blockheads flooded the network. Prior to that, the
sense
of community and mutual trust was astonishing. We didn't have to worry about
security nearly as much, since most of us were incredibly grateful to have
access
to such a resource in the first place.

I remember when computers used to come with a programming manual and
> schematics for the machine, too.  Even mid-level stereo equipment would
> often come with schematics.  That's because those folks (the generation
> before me, I'm a gen-X unit) had a significant population of people who
> cared about such things and could run a soldering iron.
>
>
Yep. And the programming manual would come with (gasp) BIOS source listings.
I remember even printers coming with a reference for all their escape
sequences, and
often royalty-free sample code in some combination of assembly language,
BASIC,
and Pascal. Sometimes C. Now, you get a kindergarten-level fold-out poster
showing you where to plug in the keyboard. Even serious programming tools
have
more text in the license agreement than they do in the printed docs.



> Just like there didn't used to be any such thing as Computer Science.
> Ie.. you learned electrical engineering (ie..  how the darn chips
> themselves worked, first) or some other technical discipline then applied
> that to computing.  Now, most colleges want to teach you Java and call you
> a computer scientist.  We get college grads all the time and I'm shocked
> to see how little they've actually been taught relating to computing.
> They are marginally more useful than high school kids and that's only
> because they don't show up quite as late for work.
>

Heh... I dropped out of college because of this trend. My so-called "data
structures" course was in reality just "Modula-2 Programming 101". I found
that I
was better served by buying old textbooks and studying on my own time, and
getting

shell accounts [was RE: strangest systems I've sent email from]

[Rich Alderson]

From: John Willis
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2016 8:02 AM

> That's another thing I remember and miss from those days... your average
> ISP would provide NNTP and UNIX shell accounts, as well as a few megs of
> space to put up a personal web site in ~/public_html.

I still read Usenet newsgroups via GNUS under Emacs on my shell account on
Panix, an ISP located in Manhattan, and have a small web site hosted there
as well:

   http://www.panix.com/~alderson/index.html 

Some things are too important to relegate to a web browser.

Rich

Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

mailto:ri...@livingcomputermuseum.org

http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

Z80 /WAIT signal question

[Eric Smith]

A friend building a Z80 system asked me about whether the Z80 /WAIT
signal has any effect during machine cycles that aren't
memory/IO/intack cycles (i.e., neither /MREQ and /IORQ asserted). The
user manual only describes the use of /WAIT for adding wait states, so
I expect it probably only affects mem/IO/intack cycles, but I can't
find anything definitive in the user manual.

I'm hoping someone can save me the time of hooking up a logic analyzer
and running the experiment.

Thanks!
Eric

Re: [OT] Alternatives to eBay

[Peter Cetinski]

> I've never seen a Craigslist ad that talked about shipping.  Really, it's
> local-only.
> 

I’ve purchased quite a few computers from across the country via Craigslist.  
Just be upfront with the seller and ask if they would be willing to ship.  I 
always specify “are you willing to drop this off at a FedEx or UPS store and 
have it packed and shipped at my expense”.  Make it as easy as possible on the 
seller.  1/2 of my inquiries go unanswered but 1/2 are willing to go to the 
trouble.  Another issue is payment.  Most Craigslisters don’t like Paypal so 
you do run some risk of having to send a check or money order.

Re: [OT] Alternatives to eBay

[Mark Linimon]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 11:07:42AM -0400, et...@757.org wrote:
> Craigslist buyers and sellers can be FLAKY, and at same time you can meet
> some awesome people through it (through the buying and selling of stuff, not
> including all the personals stuff.)

That's my experience.  Often people don't know what they have, and thus the
prices are waaay high or waaay low.

I've never seen a Craigslist ad that talked about shipping.  Really, it's
local-only.

Of all things I've bought a used vehicle through Craigslist.  I went in
very skeptical, but the seller disclosed exactly what was and was not working
and I am satisfied with what I got, half a year later.

A lot of the other ads selling similar trucks were ... sketchy.  YMMV.

mcl

Re: ND-10 software - Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Raymond Wiker]

> On 21 Apr 2016, at 14:43 , Mattis Lind  wrote:
> 
>>> 
>>> Hey, this is useful.
>>> Thanks for doing it!
>> 
>> Yep!
>> Already investigating. IMD gave me some trouble, had to resort to
>> dosbox. Source for PED (Programmer's Editor) version G? I've never
>> seen source. I have version F as a :PROG file. I'm guessing that Planc
>> version C may compile it.. this will stretch my emulator. Haven't yet
>> figured out how to handle that PED2.DMK file, so I don't know what it
>> contains - executable?
>> 
>> 
>> 
> PED2.DMK and DISK8.IMD is the same disk, but different ways of reading it
> off the disk. I used both the standard PC-floppy and then also the
> catweasel card. I tried the catweasel for some floppies that I had reading
> trouble with.
> 
> I am really interested in hearing more about your emulator!

Me too!

Re: strangest systems I've sent email from

[Ethan Dicks]

On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 7:24 AM, Rod Smallwood
 wrote:
> Extreme  Mailing
>
> What is the most unusual place you have sent mail from?

Lake Hoare, Dry Valleys, Antarctica, November, 1995, after I installed
a Ritron "radio phone" and a dialup modem at the Field Camp...

http://penguincentral.com/pics/gallery/hoare/camp.jpg
http://penguincentral.com/pics/gallery/hoare/hoare1.jpg

It's a one-hour helo ride from McMurdo, one of several Field Camps in
the region.

(There are 20 times the number of people who go to/through the South
Pole each year than ever see the Dry Valleys, so that's not as
"unusual", I'd say, but it's a runner-up)

-ethan

Re: strangest systems I've sent email from

[Chuck Guzis]

On 04/21/2016 08:01 AM, John Willis wrote:

> That's another thing I remember and miss from those days... your
> average ISP would provide NNTP and UNIX shell accounts, as well as a
> few megs of space to put up a personal web site in ~/public_html.


In fact, that's what the Internet used to mean.  No web browsers--my old
"internet Starter Kit" had an email client and the associated
connectivity software.   I used UUCP for email--and still have some of
the files.

But what are we talking about when we say "email"?

I've been on both ARPANet and USENET using terminals to communicate.
Many institutions and corporate entities, not to mention the military
(cf. AUTODIN as an example) had their own messaging systems long before
the Internet.

--Chuck

VMS consulting gig?

[Jay West]

I have an associate that is working with a large Fortune500 company and is
having issues connecting his stuff to "legacy" technology there.

 

Apparently, a company called "Synergex" has a "screen scraper" type program
that presents a gui to a windows desktop user from a character based
application (VMS or OpenVMS).

 

So if anyone has general expertise with both OpenVMS and the Synergex "GUI
on VMS programs" application, drop me a line off list and we'll get you
involved.

 

Best,

 

J

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Mark J. Blair]

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 07:27, Paul Koning  wrote:
> 
> Thick mat of twisted pair wiring, and console with two round CRTs, that's a 
> good description of a CDC 6000 series mainframe.  They certainly weren't as 
> easy to use as Unix machines, but a lot faster than anything else at the time 
> they were released.

Ah, then I am probably confusing two different memories: Seeing a CDC 6000, and 
using a Harris H800 remotely. I recall that whatever OS was running on the H800 
was very un-UNIX-like, but that's the extent of my memory.

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X 
http://www.nf6x.net/

Re: [OT] Alternatives to eBay

[ethan]

Yes, it's geographically oriented. You can do wide area searches on another 
site called searchtempest.com. I've never really found Craigslist very 
appealing, personally.


There are services that let people set alerts and it will ping them on 
their phone or something. Just post a desireable pinball machine at a low 
price to test.


When I was heading to VCF East I almost bought a music synthesizer from a 
Craigslist person but he sold it before I was heading up.


Craigslist buyers and sellers can be FLAKY, and at same time you can meet 
some awesome people through it (through the buying and selling of stuff, 
not including all the personals stuff.)

Re: strangest systems I've sent email from

[John Willis]

>
> > It wouldn't be until 1994 that the university allowed access to the
> public
> > internet directly through SLIP or PPP.
>
> My college was very restrictive that way, too.  I figured out how to get
> "slirp" working because there wasn't anyway to get a working PPP or SLIP
> connection for me from there. The things we did to get connected to the net
> in those days...


I think I remember slirp... didn't that somewhat emulate a SLIP link
through a
shell account?

That's another thing I remember and miss from those days... your average ISP
would provide NNTP and UNIX shell accounts, as well as a few megs of space
to put up a personal web site in ~/public_html.


> -Swift
>

Re: [OT] Alternatives to eBay

[Sean Caron]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, Swift Griggs wrote:


I haven't look at Craigslist much.  Isn't it more oriented to
geographically local sales?  Can you setup search alerts like on ebay?


Craigslist rocks, IMHO.  I agree that Ebay is draconian and over-corporate.
However, I also agree with others that I've found stuff on ebay I'd never
have had the opportunity to own otherwise.

Craigslist does have a feature where you can search in all cities.  I was
able to call and deal directly with a seller 2 hours South of me, once.
However, it is very "buy local" oriented.  Most sellers on Craigslist won't
hassle with you if you want it shipped.  They want you to come pick it up.
I guess if it was something you really wanted you could pay a courier to
pick it up.

It really depends on the type of gear you are looking for.

Thanks,
 Swift



While it may be possible to find neat stuff on Craigs on the coasts or in 
other big technology states like TX and select metros like Chicago, here 
in "flyover country" it's usually pretty barren.


While a few local options do exist ... mostly Property Dispo at the local
State U,  often we find ourselves bringing things in from out-of-state and
eBay has consistently been great at doing just that, connecting sellers in 
high-equipment-volume areas with buyers in low-equipment-volume areas.


Without eBay and the retail operation that Herb Johnson was running for 
some years, my collection would be nowhere as cool as it is now, that's 
for sure.


Best,

Sean

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Jon Elson]

On 04/21/2016 07:04 AM, Jules Richardson wrote:

On 04/20/2016 10:00 AM, Toby Thain wrote:
Nice collection. I'd forgotten about the 32016! What 
software ran on these

respective processors?


OS-wise the 32016 ran something called Panos, with Pandora 
as the firmware - mostly written in Modula-2.  Acorn 
(working with Logica) attempted a Xenix port, and some 
documentation references Xenix as being available, but I 
don't think it was ever released; having to run all the 
I/O across the Tube interface just proved to be too much 
of a bottleneck.




I'm pretty sure I ran both Genix and then Xenix on the 
Logical Microcomputer Co. 32016 we bought.


Jon

Re: [OT] Alternatives to eBay

[Swift Griggs]

> > I haven't look at Craigslist much.  Isn't it more oriented to
> > geographically local sales?  Can you setup search alerts like on ebay?

Craigslist rocks, IMHO.  I agree that Ebay is draconian and over-corporate. 
However, I also agree with others that I've found stuff on ebay I'd never
have had the opportunity to own otherwise.

Craigslist does have a feature where you can search in all cities.  I was
able to call and deal directly with a seller 2 hours South of me, once. 
However, it is very "buy local" oriented.  Most sellers on Craigslist won't
hassle with you if you want it shipped.  They want you to come pick it up. 
I guess if it was something you really wanted you could pay a courier to
pick it up.

It really depends on the type of gear you are looking for.

Thanks,
  Swift

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Paul Koning]

> On Apr 20, 2016, at 11:33 PM, Mark J. Blair  wrote:
> 
> Back when I spent a couple of years at UNLV in the late 80s, I had a class in 
> which I was forced to use an account on a Harris H800 computer, if my memory 
> serves me correctly. Being a BSD snob, I felt that was a terrible imposition, 
> much like being forced to calculate compound interest on a stone-age abacus 
> made from partially petrified dinosaur turds. *Without gloves.*
> 
> Now, of course, I'm a lot more easy-going, and downright curious about things 
> that might not have been my first choice for a computing environment. Even 
> VMS!
> 
> So, does anybody here know anything about that family of computers? I seem to 
> recall getting a tour of the computer room once, and the two front panels of 
> the machine were swung open to reveal two thick, mattress-like beds of 
> twisted pair wires. That seemed nauseatingly primitive to me at the time, but 
> now the memory seems fascinating.
> 
> I also seem to remember an operator's console with two round CRTs on it, but 
> I might have fabricated that memory from whole cloth.

Thick mat of twisted pair wiring, and console with two round CRTs, that's a 
good description of a CDC 6000 series mainframe.  They certainly weren't as 
easy to use as Unix machines, but a lot faster than anything else at the time 
they were released.

paul

Re: Imlac PDS-1 source code

[Tom Uban]

Yes, the mazewar source is saved. I demonstrated it running on my Imlac PDS-1
together with an emulated PDP10 (thanks to Ken Harrenstien) as well as an 
emulated
PDS-1 (thanks to Howard Palmer) back in 2006 at a VCF West.

Best,

Tom Uban

On 4/20/16 7:25 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > From: Josh Dersch
> 
> > I have an Imlac PDS-1D ...
> > There's precious little software out there for this thing
> 
> Did a copy of Mazewar for the Imlac survive?
> 
> There are partal file system dumps of some of the MIT machines, but IIRC
> Mazewar was only on MIT-DM, and I'm not sure its files are still accessible
> (although they will be on backup tape at MIT).
> 
>   Noel
> 

Re: strangest systems I've sent email from

[Swift Griggs]

On Wed, 20 Apr 2016, John Willis wrote:
> going from the terminal server and use a proper TN3270 client to access the
> mainframe instead of ProComm Plus.

Oh I remember Procomm, I was a Qmodem man, myself. However, niether had 3270
emulation. 

> It wouldn't be until 1994 that the university allowed access to the public
> internet directly through SLIP or PPP.

My college was very restrictive that way, too.  I figured out how to get
"slirp" working because there wasn't anyway to get a working PPP or SLIP
connection for me from there. The things we did to get connected to the net
in those days...

-Swift

Re: Harris RTX-2000 - Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s

[Tapley, Mark]

On Apr 20, 2016, at 9:46 PM, dwight  wrote:

> The RTX-2000 was an of shoot of the NC4000. Even at 10MHz, they could
> out compute a 40MHz 80386.
> One execution per clock cycle plus possibly using 3 16 bit busses in a single
> cycle.
> A 4MHz NC4000 could sort 1K 16 bit values in 19.7 milliseconds.
> Dwight
> 
> ….
> On 2016-04-20 1:28 PM, dwight wrote:
>> There was a Harris RTX-2000 based accelerator card around
>> the 80386 time period.
> 
> ...Interestingly: "The RTX 2000 is specifically designed to execute the
> Forth language"
> (https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/stack_computers/sec4_5.html)
> 
> --Toby

(top-post …. bottom-post …. AAagh!) :-)

The Harris RTX-2010, in a rad-hard version, was for years the CPU of choice for 
spacecraft science instruments from Johns Hopkins APL. Those chips are *all* 
*over* the solar system! One of APL's lead SW engineers wrote one of the most 
widely-used Forth test suites, partly for that reason.

It’s a pretty nice chip, for multiple reasons.
- Mark

Re: [OT] Alternatives to eBay

[Mark J. Blair]

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 00:03, curiousma...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> I haven't look at Craigslist much. Isn't it more oriented to geographically 
> local sales? Can you setup search alerts like on ebay?

Yes, it's geographically oriented. You can do wide area searches on another 
site called searchtempest.com. I've never really found Craigslist very 
appealing, personally.

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X 
http://www.nf6x.net/

Re: Manual for DEC 433au

[Laurens Vets]

On 2016-04-20 14:00, Jarratt RMA wrote:

On 19 April 2016 at 19:29 Laurens Vets  wrote:

On 2016-04-16 18:07, Glen Slick wrote:

On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 5:44 AM, Robert Jarratt
 wrote:

Anyone got the following document: DIGITAL Personal Workstation
System
Reference and Maintenance Guide



Only thing I managed to find so far:
http://www.cilinder.be/docs/digitalpwsau/miatasg.zip

Download and unzip that, then start at:
miatasgdpws_aauServiceAaudpwssg.htm

DIGITAL Personal Workstation System Reference and Maintenance Guide
a/au-Series

It's a collection of html pages, not a single pdf manual, and not
super friendly, but better than nothing.


Unfortunately, I never got/found the pdf of that manual :(

Btw, cilinder.be is my site, I only keep it in the air for the old
documentation.


Thanks for keeping that site up, even if the format isn't ideal, it
is still providing a useful manual!


Thank you :)

ND-10 software - Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Mattis Lind]

> >
> > Hey, this is useful.
> > Thanks for doing it!
>
> Yep!
> Already investigating. IMD gave me some trouble, had to resort to
> dosbox. Source for PED (Programmer's Editor) version G? I've never
> seen source. I have version F as a :PROG file. I'm guessing that Planc
> version C may compile it.. this will stretch my emulator. Haven't yet
> figured out how to handle that PED2.DMK file, so I don't know what it
> contains - executable?
>
>
>
PED2.DMK and DISK8.IMD is the same disk, but different ways of reading it
off the disk. I used both the standard PC-floppy and then also the
catweasel card. I tried the catweasel for some floppies that I had reading
trouble with.

I am really interested in hearing more about your emulator!

/Mattis

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Adrian Graham]

On 21 April 2016 at 13:04, Jules Richardson 
wrote:

> OS-wise the 32016 ran something called Panos, with Pandora as the firmware
> - mostly written in Modula-2.  Acorn (working with Logica) attempted a
> Xenix port, and some documentation references Xenix as being available, but
> I don't think it was ever released; having to run all the I/O across the
> Tube interface just proved to be too much of a bottleneck.


PANOS you say? Here it is running on the ABC-310:

http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/scripts/picshow.php?image=DSCF7209.jpg=/museum/acorn/acw=/museum/acorn/acw/index.php

(that picture was taken in 2002. I powered it up again late last year and
everything was OK APART from the ST225 which *nearly* works...)


-- 
adrian/witchy
Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest home computer collection?
www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Tor Arntsen]

On 21 April 2016 at 13:22, Torfinn Ingolfsen  wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:40 PM, Mattis Lind  wrote:
>>
>> Speaking of NORD-10 I put some scanned documents here:
>> http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-documentation
>> and also a few diskettes that I have imaged:
>> http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-floppy-disks
>>
>> One of the documents describes the microarchitecture of the NORD-10/S.
>>
>> There are some eighty more disks that are imaged but not yet put on the
>> webpage above and also quite a lot of documentation, both software and
>> hardware for the NORD-10, that I need to deal with when I have time.
>>
>
> Hey, this is useful.
> Thanks for doing it!

Yep!
Already investigating. IMD gave me some trouble, had to resort to
dosbox. Source for PED (Programmer's Editor) version G? I've never
seen source. I have version F as a :PROG file. I'm guessing that Planc
version C may compile it.. this will stretch my emulator. Haven't yet
figured out how to handle that PED2.DMK file, so I don't know what it
contains - executable?

Anyway, this should really fork into another thread, not hijacking the
Harris H800 thread.

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Jules Richardson]

On 04/20/2016 10:00 AM, Toby Thain wrote:

Nice collection. I'd forgotten about the 32016! What software ran on these
respective processors?


OS-wise the 32016 ran something called Panos, with Pandora as the firmware 
- mostly written in Modula-2.  Acorn (working with Logica) attempted a 
Xenix port, and some documentation references Xenix as being available, but 
I don't think it was ever released; having to run all the I/O across the 
Tube interface just proved to be too much of a bottleneck.

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Jules Richardson]

On 04/20/2016 08:57 AM, Toby Thain wrote:

Also going to mention the BBC Tube coprocessor here. Which had an ARM
version, iirc.


Yes, from Acorn: ARM, 32016, 6502, 65C102, Z80, 80186 and 80286.

Torch did a couple of different Z80 boards too, and a couple of different 
Z80/68000 combo boards.


Casper made a 68000 board.

PEDL made a Z80 board.

I can't think of any other commercial ones from back in the day* off the 
top of my head; Torch also made an 8088 board, but that hung off the 1MHz 
bus connector rather than the Tube. Cumana made a 68008 board but that one 
interfaced directly with the native 6502 CPU socket.


* A few people have made modern or homebrew boards with other CPUs on them.

cheers

Jules

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Torfinn Ingolfsen]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:40 PM, Mattis Lind  wrote:
>
> Speaking of NORD-10 I put some scanned documents here:
> http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-documentation
> and also a few diskettes that I have imaged:
> http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-floppy-disks
>
> One of the documents describes the microarchitecture of the NORD-10/S.
>
> There are some eighty more disks that are imaged but not yet put on the
> webpage above and also quite a lot of documentation, both software and
> hardware for the NORD-10, that I need to deal with when I have time.
>

Hey, this is useful.
Thanks for doing it!

-- 
mvh
Torfinn Ingolfsen

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Mattis Lind]

> Almost :-)
> The NORD-10/S was a NORD-10 plus caching and paging, while the
> bitsliced version was to be called NORD-10/M (M for 'micro'), and was
> so fast that it was renamed NORD-100, which was shortened to ND-100
> later that same year (1978 - but the machine itself was released in
> 1979, so it was always sold as just ND-100).
>
> -Tor
>

Speaking of NORD-10 I put some scanned documents here:
http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-documentation
and also a few diskettes that I have imaged:
http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/norsk-data-floppy-disks

One of the documents describes the microarchitecture of the NORD-10/S.

There are some eighty more disks that are imaged but not yet put on the
webpage above and also quite a lot of documentation, both software and
hardware for the NORD-10, that I need to deal with when I have time.

/Mattis

Re: strangest systems I've sent email from

[Nico de Jong]

- Oprindelig meddelelse - 
Fra: "Swift Griggs" 
Til: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" 

Sendt: 20. april 2016 18:55
Emne: Re: strangest systems I've sent email from


> On Wed, 20 Apr 2016, Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
>> For remote mailing I prefer i vt terminal and a microwave link:
>> https://youtu.be/r6NuDcemRsM
>

For the danish cold-war museum, I'm presently setting up a telex system with 
(at present) 3 or 4 Siemens T100 teleprinters (it can  support up to 16).
Apart from functioning as a 60's/70's telex exchange, it can send and 
receive e-mails, and therefore we can in principle update e.g. our facebook 
status.
The e-mail recipients are defined as a number on the exchange, and then this 
number is connected to a table, where the e-mail address is defined.
When receiving, the e-mail is to be sent to the museum at the address 
(example) te...@museum.dk. In the commentline,the text must be ZCZC 

Works like a dream. An identical system is installed at the danish it museum 
(www.ddhf.dk)
Theres is of course a limit : characters only, but special characters can be 
translated on the fly

/Nico 

--
I am using the free version of SPAMfighter.
SPAMfighter has removed 3690 of my spam emails to date.
Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len

Do you have a slow PC? Try a Free scan 
http://www.spamfighter.com/SLOW-PCfighter?cid=sigen

Re: [OT] Alternatives to eBay

[curiousmarc3]

I haven't look at Craigslist much. Isn't it more oriented to geographically 
local sales? Can you setup search alerts like on ebay?
Marc

On Apr 20, 2016, at 10:36 AM, et...@757.org wrote:
> Craigslist is the one big eBay alternative. 

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Tor Arntsen]

On 21 April 2016 at 08:07, Raymond Wiker  wrote:

> I was a bit surprised to see that it used 2901 with a date code of 1985 -
> the 2901 was introduced 10 years before.
>
> In the late 1970s, Norsk Data implemented the ND10 architecture with the
> 2901. It was thought that this would give a modest uplift over the previous
> generation, and the planned name was ND10S. It turned out to be so fast
> that Norsk Data gave it the name ND100 instead :-)

Almost :-)
The NORD-10/S was a NORD-10 plus caching and paging, while the
bitsliced version was to be called NORD-10/M (M for 'micro'), and was
so fast that it was renamed NORD-100, which was shortened to ND-100
later that same year (1978 - but the machine itself was released in
1979, so it was always sold as just ND-100).

-Tor

LSSM event announcement

[Dave McGuire]

  [I'm sending this around to several mailing lists]

  Most of you have heard of the Large Scale Systems Museum, a public
museum in the Pittsburgh area that is focused on minicomputers,
mainframes, and supercomputers.  LSSM opened its doors to the public
for the first time in October of 2015, coinciding with a city-wide
festival.  We have been doing tours by appointment since then,
averaging 3-4 tours per month.

  On April 30th, there will be another such festival here in town,
called "New Kensington Better Block".  It's a large block party that
will encompass much of the downtown area.  There will be more than
sixty street vendors offering food, handmade crafts from local
artists, and just about everything else you can think of.  There will
be two stages' worth of live music, games, a beer garden featuring
great brews from the historic Penn Brewery, lots of kids' activities
like face-painting and caricature artists, drawings and raffles, the
grand openings of three new businesses, and lots of other great stuff.

  Another star of the show, Pittsburgh-based C/PMuseum, as a guest of
LSSM, will also be returning to Better Block with a special exhibit
this time covering the history of the world's largest technology
company, Apple Computer.  From the humble beginnings of two friends
named Steve, through today, Apple's 40th anniversary.  See running
examples of the actual machines that launched Apple in the 1970s and
1980s.  In addition, the gaming wing of C/PMuseum will feature a
display with running examples of game consoles from the earliest
generations through the most modern 3D immersive virtual reality.
Where else can you start out playing on a Magnavox Odyssey, and end up
inside the VR world of an HTC Vive?  The C/PMuseum pop-up at New
Kensington Better Block, that's where!

  The LSSM will be participating in that event just as we did last
October, by being open to the public all day.  (I'm aware that this is
very short notice; for that I apologize) Many of the Very Large
Computers here will be running and demonstrated on a rotation
throughout the day.

  Come and hack on DEC PDP-8, PDP-11, and VAX systems, IBM System/36s,
and everything in between.  See Cray supercomputers, DECsystem-20s,
IBM System/370 and System/390 mainframes, and real rarities such as a
Symbolics Lisp Machine, and minicomputers from the 1960s such as an HP
2116B (one of their first!) and a Varian 620-L.  See a Heath H-1, a
tube-based analog computer from 1956.  See nearly all of the IBM
"midrange" line.  See how SSP, the operating system from the IBM
System/36, can run in a virtual environment on an AS/400.  See what an
800-pound hard drive looks like.

  All are invited!  The LSSM is located at 924 4th Avenue, New
Kensington, PA 15068, right in the middle of the block party area.
New Kensington is about ten minutes' drive from the Allegheny Valley
exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Exit 48.  It's a very easy area to
reach, and there are a number of decent and inexpensive hotels nearby.

  I hope you can make it.  Once again I apologize for the short
notice.  And of course if you cannot make it, feel free to contact the
LSSM via email to i...@lssmuseum.org or on Facebook (search for "Large
Scale Systems Museum") to set up a visit at your leisure.  You can
also see some photos of our first big public opening on that page.

  Please feel free to forward this message to anyone whom you think
might be interested.

Thanks,
-Dave McGuire
 President/Curator, LSSM

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA

Re: cctech Digest, Vol 22, Issue 20

[Michael Thompson]

>
> Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 11:12:36 +0200
> From: Jonathan Katz 
> Subject: Re: Seeking immediate rescue of full-rack SGI ONYX near
> Northbrook, IL
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 11:04 AM, Liam Proven  wrote:
>
> > Intel's effort at RISC. Didn't go so well for them, but did inspire
> > the name of Windows NT and was the original host platform for the
> > then-new OS.
> >
>
> The i860 was a neat little bugger. There was an iPSC/860 done by Intel
> which would be a fun box to save/rescue/run with its own variation of Unix.
>

I have a quad-860 VME board for Sun systems in my collection.

-- 
Michael Thompson

Re: High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Toby Thain]

On 2016-04-20 8:02 PM, Michael Thompson wrote:


Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 11:12:36 +0200
From: Jonathan Katz 
Subject: Re: Seeking immediate rescue of full-rack SGI ONYX near
 Northbrook, IL
On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 11:04 AM, Liam Proven  wrote:


Intel's effort at RISC. Didn't go so well for them, but did inspire
the name of Windows NT and was the original host platform for the
then-new OS.



The i860 was a neat little bugger. There was an iPSC/860 done by Intel
which would be a fun box to save/rescue/run with its own variation of Unix.



I have a quad-860 VME board for Sun systems in my collection.




Do you have the development environment for it?

--Toby

Re: Harris H800 Computer

[Raymond Wiker]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 6:46 AM, Mark Linimon  wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 11:21:03PM -0500, Kyle Owen wrote:
> > I seem to have acquired a few boards from a decommissioned system.
>
> 74S00s, they were going for speed.
>
> The 2900s are the well-known bit-slice chips.
>
> All definitely the level of technology I cut my teeth on.
>

I was a bit surprised to see that it used 2901 with a date code of 1985 -
the 2901 was introduced 10 years before.

In the late 1970s, Norsk Data implemented the ND10 architecture with the
2901. It was thought that this would give a modest uplift over the previous
generation, and the planned name was ND10S. It turned out to be so fast
that Norsk Data gave it the name ND100 instead :-)