Re: HP98035 Real Time clock and AC5954N clock chip
On 2019-06-08 5:40 p.m., Chris Elmquist via cctalk wrote: On Friday (06/07/2019 at 11:01AM -0700), CuriousMarc via cctalk wrote: I wondered if it's actually a digtal watch chip (2.5V could have been a couple of mercury cells in series, LED watches were not uncommon back then). In which case it would not normally have come in a 0.6" wide DIP. Perhaps normally it was a bare chip directly mounted on the watch circuit board or something. The DIP version would be unusual, which is perhaps why we can't find data on it. -tony I think you are on to something. That would make perfect sense. FWIW, there was an article in Kilobaud magazine, perhaps 1977 or '78 that described connecting a TI LED digital watch to the SS-30 bus in the SWTPC 6800. I built this then, wrecking the TI watch as a watch but it made an excellent RTC for this machine. Two AA size NiCADs were used to power the watch and charged through a simple trickle charge when the machine was powered up. The interface to the host was through a 6820 PIA, with just the segment lines and a couple of output bits. The output bits indeed "pressed" the buttons on the watch and the code would set it just like a human would by stepping through each digit in sequence and "pressing" the other button to increment that digit. When reading the clock, the code would pretend to set the watch but never increment any digit. It would just press the button to advance to the next digit, stepping through all of the digit positions until it had read them all (both time and date) and then return this buffered result. By pretending to set the clock but not actually changing it, it allowed the code to know which digit was being displayed and therefore it did not need to have the digit select lines brought into the host. Chris That article "Let Your Computer Wear a Watch" was in the October 1978 Kilobaud available on archive.org Paul.
Re: M7264 Troubleshooting
On 06/08/2019 10:37 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctech wrote: > > From: Allison > > > ODT for the two systems are very different. .. KDF-11 the ODT is part > > of the higher level code. The larger cards (11/23 and 23+) boot to > > resident (ep)rom. > > Ah, no. (Well, the KDF11 CPU's can boot to EPROM, which in the -11/23+ can be > on the CPU card; the -11/23 is a dual card and has no functionality on the CPU > card except the CPU.) Yes that is what the para quoted above implies. The resence of Eprom and serial are unique to the F11 based and later J11 quad width cards. All of the Qbus processor cards could boot to Eprom (TEV11) just like the Unibus 11s. And yes the KDF11 cpu does rely on higher level code inside the microcode its how that code was structured [and made to fit]. Also there are three cards for the KDF11, one dual width, and two quad width. The 11/23 early did not boot all devices and had different eproms (board level difference) than the later 11/23+ hence the + [and different part designations in the Mseries] designation. Back then FS noted that when requesting replacement boards and history requires it. > > The ODT in the KDF11's (and KDJ11's) is, just like in the LSI-11's, > microcode, not macro-code. From the 1982 'microcomputers and memories' > handbook, pg. 161 (in Chapter 7, "Octal Debugging Technique (Microcode > ODT)"): Save for the CPU and microcode are entirely different. ODT as a function is defined to do certain things how its done is vaguely similar at best. While implemented in ucode how its done and depnendancies are very unique to the each (again cp1600 and F11) > "The console emulator Octal Debugging Technique (ODT)is a portion of > the processor microcode ... The console ODT implemented on the LSI-11/23, > PDP-11/23 and PDP-11/23-PLUS is identical." Yes and unlike many here I have CPUs of all three form factors operational. However ODT on the dual width CPU does require a serial card as there is no way to talk to it without. That is an important difference especially if jumpered for ODT. Actually my "11" series Qbus collection includes all of the CPUs from the LSI11 though J11 based. And the bus versions are greater from the LSI11 early (and H11) though the later ones with PMI some specific to devices like the RL11 controller board set. However LSI-11/23 whatever that is, typo? So I will say the CP1600 processor of LSI-11 and the F11 (KDF-11)processor have major differences in how ODT works internally and on the bus and the code that does that are very different. To the user with a terminal its not very visible but to the service person (or someone assembling a system) it makes a difference. ODT had a specification and if you reffered to it that inside DEC it was not clear if it was microcode only that what the user/field service saw behaved in a very specific way. When applied to a specific processor it had deeper meaning. Some of that was factory test related. That Specification was an evolved thing as LSI-11 (cp1600) lead to additions and minor changes that were important to Field service and manufacturing. > and on pg. 154: > > "Unlike the LSI-11 and LSI-11/2, the LSI-11/23 does not enter console > ODT upon occurrence of a double bus error" Glad to see someone reads the books. There are other differences on power up and run states. Like the ram and console dependencies But all the M7264 posts were boiled down to the problem of not reading and understanding that ODT for that version of the CPU had dependencies. As well as the evolution of Qbus family of PDP11 CPUs and their low level and bus level idiosyncrasies. Most never refer to the LSI-11/23 that way to mean KDF-11 CPU its was a documentation error that propagated in educational services and lead to errors. LSI-11 (CP1600) was the first generation Qbus and later was F11 or J11 (or the T11). The difference was not always small as there were subtle instruction set differences and diagnostic impacts. That always had me during my yeas at DEC going which one are you talking about, as every thing had at least three names (never minding numbers) and one was usually ambiguous or a nonspecific family name. > From which I think is quite clear that the KDF11's have microcode ODT. It's not a question only the implications of how they did it. That they did it using using ucode is too road a generalization and misses implementation details. Its those details that get you when assembling systems and forgetting to include functions that are required if not used. That goes back to how DEC supported their systems when computers no longer had front panels. It was a field service requirement so they were not trying to wake a brick with nothing. Allison > Noel >
Re: Modems and external dialers.
tor 2019-06-06 klockan 13:43 +0200 skrev Liam Proven via cctalk: > On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 20:06, Fred Cisin via cctalk > wrote: > > I don't think that my Fossil (Palm-OS WATCH) does IRDA. > > I should find somebody who will pay me money for such a piece of > > crap^H^H^H^H NEAT technology. > I also hate my samsung a5 mobile - the stupid thing doesnt have something which the two ericsson mobiles i used before (and a nokia and i believe a samsung to) had. Namely a small led which was on all the time. A great thing when you need to look for the damn things while it is dark. For example in the car or in bed or out in the nature inside a tent. Stupid little things... that little led usually changed colour when the battery became low.
Alfaskop terminals and SPL programming language.
I have been scanning a few manuals and brochures related to the Alfaskop series of IBM 3270 compatible and Uniscope 100 compatible terminals. http://www.datormuseum.se/peripherals/terminals/alfaskop Unfortunately very little seems to be saved regarding this series of quite successful terminals. In total around 900.000 units were produced. Starting with the dumb 3100 with delay line memory, to the 3500/ 3700 with a TTL CPU and the the 4100 series with 6800 CPU and finally the 91xx series with 68k CPU (I believe). There is a brief history on the wiki page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfaskop) One interesting thing with the 41xx series is that it has a general purpose real time operating system described in this manual http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/Alfaskop/Alfaskop_System_41_Operating_System_Reference_Manual.pdf This manual refers to a SPL programming Language, and a SPL reference manual, which I am lacking. The SPL language seems to have realtime constructs like WAIT, DECLARE TASK, POST etc. Is there anyone that recognize the language or is it an invention made by Datasaab back in the days? Another interesting feature is that the 41xx series made use of a star coupled 300 kbit/s sort of network. Mainly to communicate with the likewise networked floppy drive or communication controller. The terminal could be configured to work stand alone with a floppy drive or using a communication controller as it seems. Depending on what it was configured for, the terminal could either run various terminal emulations, the Alfaword wordprocessing package or even the UCSD p-system. It would really be very interesting to find any of this software. So if anyone knows anything I am interested.
Re: Modems and external dialers.
tor 2019-06-06 klockan 13:43 +0200 skrev Liam Proven via cctalk: > > Result of the eventual convergence on the American model: > > We have amazingly sophisticated, high-spec smartphones and tablets, > but they have a battery life of a single day, replacing European > phones that lasted a week and PDAs that lasted a month. > > Why, no, I am *not* happy about that. > > The European PDAs had excellent keyboards you could type on. My Psion > 5MX paid for itself in the first weekend of ownership: on a > long-distance coach with a fold-down table the size of an iPad, I > wrote 2 articles, both of which I sold and which paid for the device. > > The economist wrote about this ( https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/06/08/how-the-pursuit-of-leisure-drives-internet-use ) The current situation is this: it is much more important for Apple and Samsung to sell overpriced things to consumers which then basically only will be used to play games, look on sport games and youtube films. What you used the Psion for will only sell about 4 percent of apples volumes last year The screen of the machine i write this on, stands on a sun sparcstation 10. If i had that machine running well i would be as productive writing reports on that one as on the asus tower which i now uses.
