>From time to time there are posts here about the Facit N4000 paper
tape punch/reader unit. The one that looks like a Facit 4070 with a
tape reader on the front (in fact the punch mechanism is much the same
as that in the 4070).
I have reverse-engineered mine and traced out the schematics. Of
course it's one of my hand-drawn ones but I think it's mostly legible.
If anyone wants it I am happy to send out a copy (but as ever I'd
rather send it out once and have somebody else pass it on)
-tony
So, I've come across an odd book that might interest some here: "Achieving
Accuray: A Legacy of Computers and Missiles", by Marshall William McMurray.
The first couple of chapters merely re-tell the story of earliest computers
(pre-elecronic and electronic), up through the IBM 701, Elliott 401, NCR 304,
SAGE, CDC 6600, IBM 7090, etc. Competent, but nothing special. Then it
gets interesting, though.
Chapter 4 is "Small Magnetic Drum Computers of the 1950s", and it covers a
bunch of machines I'd never heard of: JAINCOMP B-1 (!), MONROBOT III (!!),
CADAC 101, 102 (!!!) and on and on.
Chapter 5 is "Real-Time Control Computers", and it covers a long group of
machines: ALWAC I, II, III; Univac Athena; Autonetics Verdan D9A-L; Librascope
C-141 to name but a few. Pure gold, this chapter and the one before - retrieved
a lot of machines from the memory hole.
Chapter 6 is "NASA Control Computers", and it covers the usual suspects: IBM
ASC 15, IBM LVDC, IBM GDC, Librascope Centaur, AGC, IBM 4Pi. Some of these
are covered elseshere, but it's nice to have them all in one place.
Chapter 7 is "Late-Model High Speed Supercomputers", with quite a range:
starting with Cray 1, Sun, SGI, then the various ASCI array multi-processor
systems at LLNL, etc.
It then moved over to missiles, and goes through a similar progression,
starting early, with some details of WWII era stuff (e.g.Hs 293's), then a
chapter on V-1's amd V-2's and their derivatives.
More chapters on "Early US Missile Programs", NAA's inertialguidance work and
its applications up through Polaris, Titans, etc. Then more on later US
missiles and their guidance systems, such as Minuteman, Trident and MX.
A lengthy Chapter 13 is "Soviet and Russian Land-Based Missile Systems", which
doesn't have quite the detail of the US chapters (in which the authot was
personally involved), but is still novel. Another chapter then finishes with
Soiet/Russian naval missiles.
A very unusual and off-beat work.
Noel
>
> From: Joerg Hoppe <j_hoppe at t-online.de>
> Subject: DIGI-COMP 1 enhanced
>
> Guys,
>
> I added a motor drive to my DIGI-COMP I, and wrote 4 web pages about
> that device.
>
> See http://www.retrocmp.com/articles/digi-comp-1/
> or just the video https://youtu.be/D6GgxXRJXnw
>
> best regards,
> Joerg
>
That is very cool!
The RICM has a DIGI-COMP, but we have not done much with it other than put
it on display.
--
Michael Thompson
Per my post from last week, after checking out the Decitek readers I ended
up getting a used by warrantied EECO "The Director" MT-82 tape reader with
a short-height spool for a good price.
Here is the manual.
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/eeco/DOC10006_EECO_MT-82_MTS-82_Mar82.pdf
Anyone use this unit? I saw some youtube video display how the servos
appear to treat the tape kindly, that was a selling point. Not as
interested in speed as that's not the point, eh?
Bill
dwight wrote on Thu May 7 08:45:07 CDT 2020:
> There are only a few winning and tying patterns for tic tac toe. There
> was a fellow that made a relay logic that could play tic tac toe and
> would win against a human of at least tie but never lose.
Here's my version of tic tac toe in TTL logic: J/K flip flops and a ROM:
https://github.com/DoctorWkt/TTL_TicTacToe
Cheers, Warren
> From: Aaron Taylor
> I can confirm that the DEC MSV11-R is a PMI card. I own two and have
> used them with my KDJ11-B. ... the board is recognized as PMI by my KDJ11-B.
Also, in a fairly amazing bit of sleuthing, Jerry Weiss found (in some of the
early PR versions of the -11/84 TM) a diagram which actually shows an
MSV11R-R connected to the PMI bus (on pg 3-63, or thereabouts).
Thanks, guys!
Now, to try and round up enough energy to get my Q/CD machine running, to
confirm that I didn't fry mine. (I don't remember any smoke, but I'm pretty
sure I tried it, to check it, after I bought it.)
Noel
Hi, I'm looking for documentation on the MSV11-R; there's next to nothing
online. (An -11/84 manual gives config, but that's all I cam find.) There is
an 'MSV11-R User Guide' (EK-MSV1R-UG), but it's not online; I don't suppose
anyone out there has one?
I'm trying to confirm an online report that it's a PMI card; if so, I want to
put a warning on the CHWiki page for it, to warn people not to plug it into a
Q/Q backplane. (I have one, and did try it back when I first got it, but I
don't recall if I knew it might be a PMI card at the time! I'm too
lazy/low-energy to get my Q/CD machine running so I can plug it in and see if
it still works. :-)
Given the size of the card, and the amount of non-memory logic, compared to
the MSV11-M and MSV11-Q, I would tend to suspect it is a PMI card, but it
would be good to find some DEC docs to confirm it.
Noel
Hi - COVID project.... I have been attempting to read some old Honeywell
DDP-516 papertapes using the OP-80A or Teletype reader but it's inefficient
and I don't want to damage the tapes. Does anyone have a reliable
papertape reader for sale, or recommend one currently out there on Ebay,
for the purpose of archiving papertapes of any kind safely and reliably. I
have a reasonable budget. I have a lot of tapes that need to be archived,
so I'd want one that I can interface with to capture into TAP files or what
I would call a raw dump listing of the data in 8-bit Hex. MITS, SWTPc,
Z80 stuf, PDP 8, PDP 11, Honeywell, etc.
End goal is to load tapes into simH, PDPGUI, Altair/S-100, textfiles to
display tapes. I want to be able to view the tape as it would be in Intel
or Motorola format, etc. What does everyone else do?
For example:
S1131C102C20DEBD19217E167DBD185FD6259626A3
S1131C209B27C900D70297037E167DBD1999DE282C
S1131C30DF2C9C022742D6029603902DD22C2A1C1C
S1131C40D62C962DBD015ADF2CD6029603BD015A1F
S1131C509C2C2724A600BD02270820F4D602960354
S1131C60BD015ADF2ED62C962DBD015A9C2E270875
S1131C70A600BD02270820F47E167DDEDBDF027E8F
S1071C80167D0000C9
S9030000FC
Thanks for any advice.
Bill
> From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
> Subject: Odd book
> Message-ID: <20200506152915.23EA118C0AA at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
>
> So, I've come across an odd book that might interest some here: "Achieving
> Accuray: A Legacy of Computers and Missiles", by Marshall William McMurray.
>
> The first couple of chapters merely re-tell the story of earliest computers
> (pre-elecronic and electronic), up through the IBM 701, Elliott 401, NCR 304,
> SAGE, CDC 6600, IBM 7090, etc. Competent, but nothing special. Then it
> gets interesting, though.
?.
> A very unusual and off-beat work.
>
> Noel
Noel,
Thanks for the book recommendation above. I was happy to see that it was available in a reasonably priced Kindle version.
One of my favorite computer history books is Stan Augarten's 1984 book, Bit by Bit: An Illustrated History of Computers.
I did manage to find a copy and really enjoyed reading it and looking at the great photos in it. I was curious to know
a bit more about the author and in ?DuckDuckGoing? him I ran across an online college course by Haverford University:
http://ds-wordpress.haverford.edu/bitbybit/bit-by-bit-contents/front-matter… <http://ds-wordpress.haverford.edu/bitbybit/bit-by-bit-contents/front-matter…>
that has the entire text and the photos from Stan Augarten?s book. It is a great way to read an otherwise hard to find
book. It also has some .pdfs of the lecture slides from the professors who put this great web site together.
Mark
