17 Mar
2007
17 Mar
'07
1:37 p.m.
Apologies again for the quality of the photos. So this machine has been
kept in a damp basement for a while, and on removing a side panel noticed
the PSU has become fairly rusty in places. Should I just try and rem\ove
all the rust and vacuum / blast it with compressed air? And same for the
backplane and cards etc...
http://media.emergency-music.org/telmat/front.jpg
http://media.emergency-music.org/telmat/side.jpg
http://media.emergency-music.org/telmat/cage.jpg
Since the photos are poor included details of some of the ICs (ones I
thought may be of relevance):
- Backplane takes up to 7 cards, is marked 'Version A 22/10/89' and has 4
x ceramic 80486 sized ICs marked 'NEC RSRE S01 8714K9'. I don't know what
these are but suspect they may be soft configurable devices for transputer
link routing.
- 1 x mass store, with 4 banks of 36 x HM511000P105
http://media.emergency-music.org/telmat/store.jpg
- 2 x compute boards, each with 8 mezzanine boards containing an
IMST800-G20R and 8 x HM62256LP-8.
http://media.emergency-music.org/telmat/cn.jpg (mezzanine)
http://media.emergency-music.org/telmat/cn2.jpg
- 1 x P1085 Controller, with amongst other things a Z8053006PSC, ICM7170
RTC, AM2864BDC, 16 x HM62256LP-8, Li battery etc.
http://media.emergency-music.org/telmat/controller.jpg
From Googling it looks like this was the target
hardware for the Paros
system, and so would be booted via a PC. I'm not sure
whether the
controller card is some kind of minimal host or just responsible for
configuring link routing. The case also has provision for disk and tape
drives, which may well have been for the future and never implemented in
this system.
Not sure whether to try and get this up and running or to part with it so
someone else can have a go and focus on the Meiko.
Andrew
----------------
Andrew Back
a at smokebelch.org
17 Mar
17 Mar
1:53 p.m.
Should have done some more Googling before I sent that.
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007, Andrew Back wrote:
- Backplane takes up to 7 cards, is marked
'Version A 22/10/89' and has 4 x
ceramic 80486 sized ICs marked 'NEC RSRE S01 8714K9'. I don't know what these
are but suspect they may be soft configurable devices for transputer link
routing.
Looks as though the 'RSRE' chip was a bespoke switching ASIC produced for
Supernode development partner Royal Signals & Radar Establishment.
"Esprit I P1085 project The work done under the Esprit I P1085 project [1]
partially funded by CEC was related the development and applications of a
low cost high performance multiprocessor machine. The project involved
Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE prime contractor) Inmos
Thorn-Emi CRL University of Southampton University of Liverpool Aptor
University of Grenoble(Imag) and Telmat Informatique. The objectives of
the project were to develop a highly parallel architecture based on
transputers and associated system software and applications. To achieve
this Inmos developed the T800 transputer starting from the T414 and the
consortium defined the whole machine architecture. Started in December
1985 this 3 years project led to significant industrial products: the T800
transputer the machine architecture and part of the associated software."
http://spiedl.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PSISD…
And I'm guessing based on the above and the fact the T800s are marked
'prequal' means they are samples or something?
Andrew
5:44 p.m.
Andrew Back wrote:
Should have done some more Googling before I sent
that.
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007, Andrew Back wrote:
<snip>
Sounds like it could be related to a machine in the Jim Austin
collection (http://www.computermuseum.org.uk/) / supercomputers / meganode.
James
- Backplane takes up to 7 cards, is marked
'Version A 22/10/89' and
has 4 x ceramic 80486 sized ICs marked 'NEC RSRE S01 8714K9'. I don't
know what these are but suspect they may be soft configurable devices
for transputer link routing.
Looks as though the 'RSRE' chip was a bespoke switching ASIC produced
for Supernode development partner Royal Signals & Radar Establishment.
"Esprit I P1085 project The work done under the Esprit I P1085 project
[1] partially funded by CEC was related the development and 
6:37 p.m.
New subject: Telmat P1085 (Esprit Supernode) - more bad photos of transputer kit!
I don;'t know if it'd be of any help, but I built my own trasnputer-based
hardware about 15 years ago. That's ARD-style building, with soldering
iron and 'scope, not just plugging a few TRAMs together :-).
Anyway, I syspect a lot of this would very easily come back to me, and I
certainly still have all the databooks, and for that matter, some real
hardware, here.
Feel free to ask me stuff if you think I might know the answers. The
worst that can happen is 'I haven't a clue!'
-tony
20 Mar
20 Mar
5:03 p.m.
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007, Tony Duell wrote:
I don;'t know if it'd be of any help, but I
built my own trasnputer-based
hardware about 15 years ago. That's ARD-style building, with soldering
iron and 'scope, not just plugging a few TRAMs together :-).
Anyway, I syspect a lot of this would very easily come back to me, and I
certainly still have all the databooks, and for that matter, some real
hardware, here.
Feel free to ask me stuff if you think I might know the answers. The
worst that can happen is 'I haven't a clue!'
Thanks for the offer. If/when I get round to cleaning off the rust etc I
may well be in touch. I think following which I'd first need to either get
a PC host up and running else chain it on to the Meiko node that has a Sun
FEP, then trying booting.
Andrew
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andy＠smokebelch.org -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
james＠machineroom.info