out-of-mainstream minis

[Nico de Jong]

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
  =