Re: Identifying some boards
Originally, System Engineering Laboratories (SEL) out of Fort Lauderdale (later bought by Gould (Gould SEL), then NEC and finally spun off as Encore) built one of the original 32 bit mini computers (and later super-minicomputers) in the 70's -90's. Popular for large flight simulators and nuclear power plant control, they were high performance real-time computers. The instruction set was designed and implemented in many technologies. In the latter days, micro-programmed bit slice architecture enabled the company to squeeze the performance of a multi board CPU set down onto a single board. The VERY large connectors seen were the standard backplane, the SELbus. The central pins were actually the bus itself, while pins on the end were carried through the backplane to create an IO bus where boards plugged onto the BACK of the backplane. The instruction set was nice and easy to code in assembly. The machines I worked with in the early 80s )32/87, 32/8780, 32/9780) were typically about 4 times faster than a VAX 11/780 and considerably faster for interrupt response in a real-time environment. The primary OS was called MPX-32. though machines with a slightly modified instruction set (called PowerNodes - PN9000) ran a Unix variant. Primary programming languages were FORTRAN and assembly. This class of machine (minicomputers) of course fell to the side once microprocessors picked up speed in the 90s... The architecture is generally referred to as SEL32 - there is a mostly complete SIMH implementation of this architecture that needs some more testing and debugging. Those were fun times. Mike Niswonger, crufty old minicomputer and FORTRAN programmer On 6/24/19 10:16 AM, Kyle Owen via cctalk wrote: I picked up these boards many weeks ago, but haven't photographed them until recently. Some of them are pretty disgusting, but some of the others look alright. Anyone have any idea what these came out of? Some are labeled Gould, others are labeled Encore. http://imgur.com/a/d9iK9qb Thanks! Kyle
Re: Identifying some boards
On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 01:09:08PM -0400, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote: > This class machine (for example) > http://vintagecomputer.net/Tricord/ Heh. That's a name I hadn't heard in a while. Your Tricord system was probably designed by a guy named Rick Nicholson who I later worked with. mcl
Re: Identifying some boards
On Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:19 AM Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > On Thu, 27 Jun 2019 at 23:11, Bill Degnan via cctalk > wrote: > > > > These look like they're from 486 era file server hardware. > > Not even slightly, IMHO. > > They're from 1989. That is the year the 80486 was first introduced, so > too early, and also huge wide slots like that aren't from any kind of > Intel box I've ever seen. > > - This class machine (for example) http://vintagecomputer.net/Tricord/ Same kind of quad processor 486 board. I sold one a while back, and I gave away the Ticord system but I should have a few similar boards here and there in my file server inventory. Stuff from the days of the Novell file servers. Bill >
Re: Identifying some boards
On Thu, 27 Jun 2019 at 23:11, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote: > > These look like they're from 486 era file server hardware. Not even slightly, IMHO. They're from 1989. That is the year the 80486 was first introduced, so too early, and also huge wide slots like that aren't from any kind of Intel box I've ever seen. -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: Identifying some boards
These look like they're from 486 era file server hardware. On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 11:16 AM Kyle Owen via cctalk wrote: > I picked up these boards many weeks ago, but haven't photographed them > until recently. Some of them are pretty disgusting, but some of the others > look alright. > > Anyone have any idea what these came out of? Some are labeled Gould, others > are labeled Encore. > > http://imgur.com/a/d9iK9qb > > Thanks! > > Kyle >
