Re: [Simh] NH14 and TR01

[Timothe Litt]

On 27-Feb-16 17:42, Paul Koning wrote:
> Height Analysis was the category assigned to the N class part
> numbers way back.  The vocabulary was different
> then.  DEC modules included Pulse Amplifiers and Pulse delay lines.  The
> KA10 was built with asynchronous logic
> (no clock).  It's more likely that the name came from that - but I don't
> know.  It's actually quite odd that the NH14
> ended up there, as A* was used for DA/AD converters.  It's possible that
> someone slipped NH as a play on the
> state past the chief engineer's office.Or it's possible that you're
> on the right track and the application area
> was one of the national labs.
> I would guess a simpler explanation: the application area is nuclear physics, 
> so N may simply be "nuclear".
>
>   paul
>
What the OML says (and what I originally posted) is:

Note that A is reserved for ADCs, which this device clearly is. 

It was actually quite involved to get a part number assigned.   There
was a passion for
semantic part numbers, for consistency, and for accurate
characterization.  This one is
an interesting anomaly.   Aside from a series of packaged PDP11-based
SCADA systems,
very few N-series part numbers were actually issued, and they seem
random.  VAXcamera is one.

"National Labs" = DOE facilities: Oak Ridge, Livermore, Sandia, Los Alamos.



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Re: [Simh] NH14 and TR01

[Paul Koning]

> On Feb 27, 2016, at 5:37 PM, Timothe Litt  wrote:
> 
>> ...
> CSS was also in Merimack.   And the design engineer for this device was,
> at last report, located there.  That's why I
> wrote CSS in MK rather than Nashua.

Interesting...

> ...

> Pulse Height Analysis was the category assigned to the N class part
> numbers way back.  The vocabulary was different
> then.  DEC modules included Pulse Amplifiers and Pulse delay lines.  The
> KA10 was built with asynchronous logic
> (no clock).  It's more likely that the name came from that - but I don't
> know.  It's actually quite odd that the NH14
> ended up there, as A* was used for DA/AD converters.  It's possible that
> someone slipped NH as a play on the
> state past the chief engineer's office.Or it's possible that you're
> on the right track and the application area
> was one of the national labs.

I would guess a simpler explanation: the application area is nuclear physics, 
so N may simply be "nuclear".

paul

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Re: [Simh] NH14 and TR01

[Timothe Litt]

On 27-Feb-16 17:23, Paul Koning wrote:
>> On Feb 27, 2016, at 5:00 PM, Timothe Litt  wrote:
>>
>>> Timothe, 
>>>
>>>
>>> This list that you published an excerpt from, it it available online 
>>> somewhere? 
>>>
>>> I am curious to understand what the DEC options NH14 and TR01 were?
>>>
>>> Are they listed there as well?
>>>
>>
>> 
>>
>> I don't have info on the NH04...but we know that N* is "pulse height 
>> analysis equipment".  But if we look elsewhere, we
>> find:
>> 
> Pulse height analysis sounds like the sort of device you use to do gamma ray 
> spectrography -- scintillators attached to photomultipliers, whose outputs 
> are pulses with height proportional to the gamma energy.
>
>> So the NH14 is a dual 12-bit Analog-Digital converter, built by DEC's 
>> computer special systems group in Merrimack, NH.
> CSS was in Nashua, next doors to the FAA "Boston Center" ARTCC facility.  
> It's now partly a billiards club and partly a vacuum technology company.  
> Merrimack was the home of "Comm Engineering", RSTS development, Typeset-8, 
> Typeset-11, Assist-11, WPS-8, PDP-15 software support, Telephone Products 
> Group (later Ultrix engineering) before that moved to Nashua Spit Brook Road. 
>  Merrimack was the first large DEC facility in NH, and according to legend, 
> the place where Ken Olsen took Mass. governor Tsongas with the DEC 
> helicopter, saying "this is where we're moving all of DEC unless you do 
> something about Mass. taxes".  But he did not follow up on that threat.
>
>   paul
>
CSS was also in Merimack.   And the design engineer for this device was,
at last report, located there.  That's why I
wrote CSS in MK rather than Nashua.

I worked with CSS in both buildings - and before that when they were
called DAS (DEC Advanced Systems).

DAS did the early work on the PDP-10 networking that became ANF-10,
which was the first 'DECnet'.  And Typeset-10.

But they were known for customer specials.  They branched out to
low-volume products to increase
their ROI. 

Merrimack was unique in that if you went out the back lot, you could use
a private entrance onto the
toll highway.  You could get tokens at the guard desk - at about 1/2 the
price of going the long way around.

I think I still have one of those tokens; you had to buy two, and I made
an odd number of trips.

Pulse Height Analysis was the category assigned to the N class part
numbers way back.  The vocabulary was different
then.  DEC modules included Pulse Amplifiers and Pulse delay lines.  The
KA10 was built with asynchronous logic
(no clock).  It's more likely that the name came from that - but I don't
know.  It's actually quite odd that the NH14
ended up there, as A* was used for DA/AD converters.  It's possible that
someone slipped NH as a play on the
state past the chief engineer's office.Or it's possible that you're
on the right track and the application area
was one of the national labs.





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Re: [Simh] NH14 and TR01

[Paul Koning]

> On Feb 27, 2016, at 5:00 PM, Timothe Litt  wrote:
> 
>> Timothe, 
>> 
>> 
>> This list that you published an excerpt from, it it available online 
>> somewhere? 
>> 
>> I am curious to understand what the DEC options NH14 and TR01 were?
>> 
>> Are they listed there as well?
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't have info on the NH04...but we know that N* is "pulse height analysis 
> equipment".  But if we look elsewhere, we
> find:
> 

Pulse height analysis sounds like the sort of device you use to do gamma ray 
spectrography -- scintillators attached to photomultipliers, whose outputs are 
pulses with height proportional to the gamma energy.

> So the NH14 is a dual 12-bit Analog-Digital converter, built by DEC's 
> computer special systems group in Merrimack, NH.

CSS was in Nashua, next doors to the FAA "Boston Center" ARTCC facility.  It's 
now partly a billiards club and partly a vacuum technology company.  Merrimack 
was the home of "Comm Engineering", RSTS development, Typeset-8, Typeset-11, 
Assist-11, WPS-8, PDP-15 software support, Telephone Products Group (later 
Ultrix engineering) before that moved to Nashua Spit Brook Road.  Merrimack was 
the first large DEC facility in NH, and according to legend, the place where 
Ken Olsen took Mass. governor Tsongas with the DEC helicopter, saying "this is 
where we're moving all of DEC unless you do something about Mass. taxes".  But 
he did not follow up on that threat.

paul

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Re: [Simh] NH14 and TR01

[Timothe Litt]

> Timothe, 
>
>
> This list that you published an excerpt from, it it available online
> somewhere? 
>
> I am curious to understand what the DEC options NH14 and TR01 were?
>
> Are they listed there as well?
>




I don't have info on the NH04...but we know that N* is "pulse height
analysis equipment".  But if we look elsewhere, we
find:


So the NH14 is a dual 12-bit Analog-Digital converter, built by DEC's
computer special systems group in Merrimack, NH.
Probably designed for the PDP-9 and used on the PDP-15; the DW15 would
be an I/O Bus interface module.

API probably isn't what you think.  It's likely "Automatic Program
Interrupt" - that is, you can get an interrupt on
conversion done rather than polling.

The TR01 isn't listed, but it would be a magtape controller or
transport.  Probably the latter.  The TR02 went EOL in 1973, so
the TR01 would be earlier than that.  From the age, likely 7-track,
perhaps 200 BPI.  But those are guesses. 

Note that a DEC part number is a 4-2 or 2-5-2 format.  The suffix can
make a big difference, even if it's blank.

I didn't work with either device mentioned.

I don't remember where I found my copies of the OML.  (Though I
sometimes wish I'd saved the unedited copies that I once had.)


On 27-Feb-16 16:24, Mattis Lind wrote:
> Timothe, 
>
>
> This list that you published an excerpt from, it it available online
> somewhere? 
>
> I am curious to understand what the DEC options NH14 and TR01 were?
>
> Are they listed there as well?
>
> /Mattis
>
> 2016-02-27 21:27 GMT+01:00 Timothe Litt  >:
>
> On 27-Feb-16 14:19, Bob Supnik wrote:
>> Thanks, Tim. Burroughs made a lot of fixed head disks at the
>> time. I can't identify the model, but the IA2 (see page 7-4 of
>> the B6700 Hardware Handbook, on bitsavers) seems like a
>> possibility. It has 7552 sectors per surface vs 8000, but
>> Burroughs sectors were longer than DEC sectors (180 x 8b = 1440b
>> vs 32 x 36b = 1152b), so perhaps DEC format had more sectors per
>> track.
>>
>> While the 18b- and 36b-groups used the same disk buyout, they
>> went to different vendors for drums. The Type 24 and RM09 came
>> from Vermont Research; the RM10B from Bryant.
>>
>> /Bob
>>
>> On 2/27/2016 12:00 PM, simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com
>>  wrote:
>>> Message: 3
>>> Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2016 09:31:59 -0500
>>> From: Timothe Litt 
>>> To:simh@trailing-edge.com 
>>> Subject: Re: [Simh] RB09 == RD10
>>> Message-ID:<56d1b35f.3040...@ieee.org>
>>> 
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>
>>> On 27-Feb-16 08:23, Bob Supnik wrote:
 >Max Burnet gave me a pointer from some old price lists,
 showing that
 >the RD10 had very similar specs to the RB09. The RC10 manual
 confirms
 >it - same BCD addressing of tracks and sectors, same number of
 tracks,
 >same sectors per track, same words per sector (32 x 36b for
 the RD10,
 >64 x 18b for the RB09). So the "RD10s" on some PDP-9s in the
 services
 >listing are actually RB09s, at least at the drive level.
 >
 >I still don't know what an RC09 is. Alternate name for an RB09?
 >Half-sized variant? Another mystery is who made the actual drive
 >mechanism. It precedes DEC's first internally designed fixed head
 >disk, the RF09/RS09, by two years.
>>> According to the option module list, the RC09 is a "Control for
>>> Burroughs Disk"  The design engineer was J. Milton.
>>>
>>> That makes sense, as the RC10 was the PDP10 controller for disk
>>> and drums.
>>>
>>> FWIW, Family members: the RD10 was made by Burroughs.  The RM10B
>>> drum
>>> was by Bryant.  SW documentation was removed from the PDP-10 doc
>>> set in
>>> the 80s, but as I wrote previously, I believe the tech manuals
>>> are on
>>> the FS microfiche.  The section with the red stripes on top.
>>>
>>> The drums were notoriously unreliable.  Especially the ones in
>>> the Mill,
>>> though things improved when someone realized that they tended to
>>> crash
>>> when semitrailers bumped into the loading dock above them
>>
> I think this is confusing due to the hierarchy/bundling.  It's not
> complicated,
> I think :-)
>
> Summary:
>
> RB09 = RC09 + RD10.  (-A for 50 HZ)
> Probably salable part number.
>
> RC09 = Controller
>  Probably not salable, except perhaps as FS spare.
>
> RD10 = Drive
>  Probably not salable, ditto
>
> FS probably used the controller on the contract rather than the
> bundle.  They did that
> a lot. Remember that these early drives each had a dedicated
> controller.