out-of-mainstream minis

Rod Smallwood rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com
Fri Aug 21 09:30:59 CDT 2015


Hi

Yes I know, but its not the norm to link from an English language email 
to a site in another language with no warning.
I suppose they think everybody speaks Danish.

You could be heading into some real dark places without knowing. Rule 
16b never logon to a site you cant read.

Rod


On 21/08/2015 13:35, Dave G4UGM wrote:
> Google Translate does a reasonable job...
>
> http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=da&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdatamuseum.dk%2Fddhf-samlinger&edit-text=&act=url
>
> Dave
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Rod
>> Smallwood
>> Sent: 21 August 2015 11:41
>> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
>> <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>> Subject: Re: out-of-mainstream minis
>>
>> I'm sure its very intersting.
>> The website is designed for domestic consumption only as its all in Danish.
>>
>> Rod
>>
>>
>> On 21/08/2015 11:27, Ian S. King wrote:
>>> I had the privilege of visiting what Nico calls a 'museum-to-be'
>>> yesterday evening, and it is far more than most of what I've seen!
>>> They have a very substantial collection of all sorts of systems,
>>> peripherals and documentation, including a GIER from ca. 1962 that I saw
>> (and heard) run.
>>> As a debugging/operations aid, they had attached the overflow bit to a
>>> speaker so it could generate 1-bit sound - one demo they gave me was a
>>> program to calculate e that played a sound for each iteration so you
>>> could hear the steady progress.  But of course if there is a sound
>>> output, no one can avoid playing with it.  There were numerous pieces
>>> of computationally generated music composed for the machine (on paper
>>> tape), but also a program for playing a recorded, real-life sound in 1-bit
>> audio!
>>> The collection includes numerous other computers including pretty much
>>> the entire RC line, as well as pre-computer tabulators, keypunches,
>>> paper handling machine and the like.  The artifacts are well-ordered
>>> and in large part well labeled for even the uninitiated visitor.
>>>
>>> Everything is laid out quite thoughtfully, with wide aisles, in a
>>> large, well-lit basement.  There are interpretive displays here and
>>> there, as well as a small but appealing lecture/display area.
>>>
>>> The datamuseum.dk collection represents 25 years of accumulation, I
>>> was told.  But more importantly, I think their work demonstrates a
>>> very well-considered approach for presenting the history of the
>>> collection's machines to visitors.
>>>
>>> My hosts were also warm and wonderful people who clearly love what
>>> they do and enjoy sharing it.  They made me feel among friends, if not
>>> family.  :-)
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks, Finn and everyone else (sorry, I'm bad with names), for
>>> sharing your time and your passion with me!  -- Ian
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 12:43 AM, Nico de Jong <nico at farumdata.dk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I share your favourite(s). In the danish IT-museum-to-be (
>>>> www.datamuseum.dk) we have two P857-based systems running. We
>> have
>>>> lots of spare parts and nearly all documentation, so if you need
>>>> something, you are welcome to ask.
>>>> I'm presently building a "table top" version of a system with the
>>>> P857 CPU, 35cm H x 60 deep x 19" wide, with a dual 8" floppy drive,
>>>> and a 80486 PC for program loading etc.
>>>> The system is built into a P859 box. The P859 CPU is special, as it
>>>> has a
>>>> V24 connection that goes to a LED display with push buttons. Very
>>>> nice indeed.
>>>> For that system, I have developped a Windows based Assembler, and a
>>>> Windows based simulator. The simulator takes assembled programs (in
>>>> my system called *.OBJ) and the original source. You can then step
>>>> through the instructions, and follow them through the text file on the PC.
>>>> I am presently trying to execute various utility programs, sent to me
>>>> by a Belgion ex-Philips employee, who did a lot of work on the P800
>> series.
>>>> I myself worked with the P800 series, disguised as the PTS6800 series
>>>> for
>>>> 4-5 years full time.
>>>> The PTS 6800 series was used extensively in banks, mainly in
>>>> Scandinavia, Greece, Barclay SouthAfrica, Philippines. In Sweden also
>>>> in the airline industry. In Denmark it was used mainly by local
>>>> authorities, PTT, Railway (ticket printing), and some other
>>>> small-time projects. In one of the project it was connected to an ATM (fun
>> project).
>>>> I know of one collector in the Netherlands (Camiel), and some guys
>>>> who have no hardware but a lot of knowledge /Nico
>>>>     ----- Original Message -----
>>>>     From: tony duell
>>>>     To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
>>>>     Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2015 7:31 AM
>>>>     Subject: RE: out-of-mainstream minis
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     Not all minis came from the States :-)
>>>>
>>>>     One of my favourite non-mainstream families is the Philips P800 series.
>>>> It's
>>>>     a 16 bit machine with 16 registers (0 is the program counter and 15
>>>>     is the stack pointer, rest are mostly general purpose) and separate
>>>>     I/O instructions (not memory-mapped I/O). There were several models
>>>>     with various implementations of the architecture, including
>>>>
>>>>     P850 (TTL, hardwired not microcoded)
>>>>
>>>>     P855, P852, P856, P857, P860 (TTL, microcoded)
>>>>
>>>>     P851 (Custom bitslice ICs, microcoded)
>>>>
>>>>     P854 (AM2900 bitslice, microcoded)
>>>>
>>>>     P853 I think (Single chip)
>>>>
>>>>     No, I don't have all of those...
>>>>
>>>>     -tony
>>>>     =
>>>>
>>>
>



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