Checking on if anyone has an old Interact system out there.
It wasn't widely successful, but gained some popularity around Ann Arbor,
MI. I've not come across one of these yet. But I've come across one of
its "Killer Application", a tape-based program called Message Center that
lets users construct banner message scripts with a few video/audio effects.
Would be interested to see this "for real" rather than just in the
MAME emulator. Or also to hear any stories about the system, such as
anyone who actually used one, or saw one being used at a storefront?
-Steve
Well, just yesterday I tested a set of RWS (RAM) replacement cards for the
IBM 5110 from Patrick Lebbard from Canada - and I'm very impressed. They
work well, I had them running for a few hours.
Details are described here:
https://voidstar.blog/ibm-5110-rws-ram-modern-make-replacements/
or VCF thread
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/ibm-5110-ram-timings.1253087/
I don't think he plans on becoming a retailer, they've offered up the
schematic and such. But he did make these boards for me after I shipped
him a set of the base connectors that you need (to adapt them to the 5110's
A1 board) that I pulled from a known-broken board.
His motivation is that he does have a 5100 also that he's trying to
resurrect, so he plans to carry on and make an IBM 5100 version of these
modules also (still resolving a few technical differences between them, so
it's not working out just yet - but the 5110 version of these I can say
seem flawless).
Anyway, exciting stuff to see someone technically savvy enough to probe
signals and reverse engineer 50+ year old tech!
-Steve
I've been digging through CHM and bitsavers and haven't found an IMF for
5100 or 5110 yet. It seems a lot of CE material was just not saved.
However, I've been tracing execution of ExecROS and the APL ROS - thanks
to your excellent emulator and the extracted ROS files this works well.
Have learned a few things about the jump tables, I'd imagine that the
type 23 files would likely install themselves in high memory and modify
an IOCB jump entry to point to the new/patch code. Kind of like how you
take over the printer IOCB.
One little issue I found with your emulator is behavior of interrupts
while in HOLD.
Per the APL and BASIC manuals, pressing HOLD while a program is running
should pause the output (mostly so you can read the screen before output
scrolls up), and then pressing HOLD again is supposed to continue execution.
In emu5110 that didn't work, pressing HOLD always stopped but a 2nd
press wanders off in to never land (hang or bogus error or junk on screen).
While tracing & learning I noticed that if code was being executed from
one of the language ROS, HOLD would fail. But HOLD/resume worked fine
on an idle machine - idle is a short loop that just blinks the _ cursor
at location 0x0200+902 in APL.
So looking through the pseudo-schematics/block diagrams in SY31-0552-3
IBM 5110 System Logic there is quite a bit of gate logic on the multiple
ROS cards, plenty of wires between them. Maybe, hardware interrupts are
held off in hardware when we are doing reads from the language ROS
cards. The interrupt bits are properly shown in a register, but nothing
detailing gating of interrupt -> CPU.
To test the idea I made this change in emu.c:
175c175,176
< check_int(); /* check for pending interrupts */
---
>if(curr_ros==ExecROS) /* if in ExecROS we can HOLD/resume */
> check_int(); /* check for pending interrupts */
and now HOLD works as expected.
Norbert's JavaScript port had the same issue with HOLD, he ported the
above and confirmed that the HOLD now works properly.
As a side note, the MAME emulation (which may have been done
independently) has the same problem, likely could use the same fix.
Anyone know how to contact the MAME author?
There was a lot of interest in the CHM release of APL\360 source along
with auto-operator and I've tried contact a few of those folks, we just
need one CE or user who kept a box of floppies.
-Robert
VCFMW in Chicago was this past weekend!
Flew up with 2 bags, came back with 4 ! Funny thing is, my wife said she
was surprised I didn't come back with anything extra - well, I shipped
those extra 2 bags and they haven't shown up yet. Gives me one day to come
up with a cover story! :)
There is so much going on at the Chicago VCF - I don't think any
individual can cover the whole thing. Instead of a blog, this time I'm
trying a "video photo album" to cover some of the highlights that I was
able to see.
Search
Xiphod's Photo Album of Vintage Computer Fest (no commentary) - VCF Chicago
2025
or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld1CXUTusDI
or
https://rumble.com/v6z4aia-xiphods-photo-album-of-vintage-computer-fest-no-…
Mainly my goal was to pick up a POLY-88 that folks have been helping to
restore off-and-on over the past 18 months. They got it going, so that was
one of the shipments back. The other was an Apple TAM at too good a price
to pass up. (and yes, wife already knows they are coming)
If it's any indicator: come Sunday afternoon, merchants were fairly eager
to sell at any offer (some announcing that anything unsold would go
straight to scrap - maybe that's a ploy, but there were some under $10
bargains to be had, a kind of "everything must go" vibe).
- Steve
I just love the PDP11's assembly language. I needed a super-tight
subroutine to print a 16-bit value as 6 octal digits. This is as tight as I
could make it, 16 words (including writing to the serial port, which takes
5 words). Can you beat it?
;*** Subroutine *************************
;Print a 16-bit value as 6 octal digits
;Calling Sequence:
; jsr PC,PROCT6
;On Entry:
; R2 = value to print
;Trashes R1,R2
;****************************************
PROCT6: mov #100030,R1 ;Digit loop ends when '1' lands in C
;..'30' makes it ASCII
sec ;All done when this is in C again
;Extract a digit and convert it to ASCII. Check for done.
1$: rol R2 ;Shift digit out of R2 & into R1
beq 3$ ;Return when done
rol r1 ;Build next octal digit
bcc 1$ ;Done when c = shift pattern bit
;Write digit to the serial port
2$: tstb @#CTXSTA ;Wait for transmitter (clears C)
bpl 2$
movb R1,@#CTXDAT ;Transmit now
;Next digit
mov #020006,R1 ;Digit ends when "2" lands in C.
;Printing ends when "sec" bit
;..leaves R2. '6' makes ASCII
br 1$
3$: rts PC
Martin E.
Crazy long shot.
I just picked up a HMI-200-64180 for $75 shipped. Curious if anyone has
the manual and software for it?
There is some very limited info on bit savers but nothing for the 64180.
I'd also possibly be interested in picking up the 6809 version if anyone
has one they no longer need and the price is fair.
https://web.archive.org/web/19980206071507/http://www.hmi.com/200.html
Thanks
For those of you who run vintage computing-related info sites, have you
noticed all of the LLM scraper activity? AI services are using the LLM
scrapers to populate their knowledge bases.
At any given moment 5-10 of them are active on vintagecomputer.net. It’s
funny, when I ask an AI about something vintage computing-related,
something obscure, I can trick into giving me an answer from my own site.
I have actually had to modify the site code to manage the traffic, to
improve efficiency.
But they’re not going after just my site, these scrapers are absorbing
copies of the entire WWW.
I wonder how long the WWW will remain open, it would be a bummer if I found
copies of my site elsewhere.
Bill
I have a Connectix quick cam. The on ly label says FCC ID LKD1. The
connector is a mini-DIN that looks like a PS-2 mouse or keyboard plug.
Do you need it?
