Date : Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:10:30 +0000
From : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: Warning: Sad case on list!
Fragula wrote:
> Jules Richardson wrote:
>
>> Ha ha! That ACW is still going strong, and it acquired a sibling not so
>> long ago - hopefully they won't start breeding!
> Heh. I don't think you'd have much trouble finding homes for the
> puppies. ACW's are far to the right on the cool wall, apart from the
> noise and heat.. I think i might try grafting a modern SCSI drive into
> mine to make it more user friendly.
Think we've been through the SCSI side of things on this list a few times in
the past and I can never remember the exact ins and outs, other than it
probably won't work without modifying ROM code, and even then you need a drive
that'll handle 256 byte sectors - which isn't many of them.
> Or should that be less of a H&S infringement!
Heh heh, does your ACW have the little screwed-down metal catch covers on the
back to stop anyone being able to open the case with zero tools? :-)
> > Actually, I'm not against doing cool stuff with machines that are still
>> dead easy to come by like beebs - hence the image wall project
> You were serious about that?
Well why not... 16 Cub screens, one beeb per Cub, stick the boards in a rack
next to it, 640x1024 res in mode 2. Funky. :-)
Not sure what to use for the controlling machine as I'd like a camera hooked
up to it - so it needs something that'll process an image and spit the
relevant chunks out to each beeb in a reasonable amount of time. Gotta be
something vintage too, of course.
>> and the
>> idea of chaining lots of beebs together to render fractals...
> I've got BASIC basic (its fairly basic, and written in BBC BASIC, ported
> to ISO Pascal too, which I did *purely* because it required a bit of
> lateral thinking) Mandelbrot code working back in 1993 or so,
> Someplace<tm> on a Master Turbo (no reason I can think of ATM why it
> shouldnt run on a B or Master 128. I'll dig that out, unless you have
> done one already.
Well this was Mikes (as in profpep's) baby, not mine - he mentioned on here
that he had 8 beebs hooked together once rendering fractals on one screen.
Strikes me that it'd make quite a cool retro display in its own right, and
it's not like there are a shortage of BBC micros about!
> Its not fast though. Summit like 6 hours per screen
Hmm... probably need something that'll run in about 2 hours or so I suppose,
so that it'll do several passes each day and visitors can come back to it and
see how it's doing. Of course with several beebs it should go pretty well...
>> Heh heh... I still have a couple, would love to find one of the more
>> impressive Amigas for the museum though - I think we only have A500 and
>> A1200s :-(
> Hmm.. I should have a B1000 kicking around Someplace<tm> It looks the
> bats on the outside, but is a fairly basic machine internally. I can't
> remember if it has ISA slots as well as the native ones, or not. Then
> again, i'm not sure whether thats impressive or not.. Used to know a
> chap called Justin who had an A600 that used to do MPEG playback and all
> sorts, had an '040, about 32M of RAM, and a gig or two of hard disk, and
> that was back then! (around 94!!!) He used to cycle around with it in a
> shoulder bag.
Amigas always were pretty cool - although I dug out some of my fave old demos
a while ago and they all looked horribly dated :)
>> Worst PDP is going to be the DECSystem 570 when we get it running, as I
>> think that's got 4MB on it - start it up first thing and it might be
>> operational by lunchtime!
> Heh.. We used to have a VAX6400 cluster at work Gone now, thank heavens.
Hmm, think we have a 6400... oh, maybe it's a 6500. Huge aircraft engine style
three phase fan in the middle of it all...
We've got an 8600 sitting in storage which is an interesting beastie and takes
up about ten racks :)
> > Ahhh, I think I know the board you mean. Can't for the life of me
>> remember what it's called now, but we have one just like that (still in
>> its original box too!)
> I have a photo someplace.. Hang on.
> <clicketty click>
> http://www.hyperdark.org/deskdaleks/
PSP user! (me too, actually :)
Hmm, you need to motorise those daleks...
> Ahh.. http://www.hyperdark.org/linkedimages/otherputers/
Nice. No GT40 I take it? I'd love to find one for lunar lander purposes...
>> they're really difficult to come by.
> You just missed one ->
> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8769303133
eek... non-profit organisation which means no money to actually *buy* stuff :)
(actually, we do have some cash kicking around for emergencies, but generally
it's a no-no)
> You know where MGT were based?
No idea actually. I remember drooling over the machine in a Crash mag review
donkeys years ago...
>>> a box of Orics of various flavours (Oric=Tangerine so in the box
>>> with a Tanbug-1 , same as AIM-65 i think.
>> I've got a feeling we're not exactly flush with Orics.
> Which ones don't you have?
I think all we have are standard mushroom-a-like Oric 1's.
>> Blimey - I'd be very interested to hear of anything you might find.
> I'll scan the article next time i go through my old WWs and Micro Users
> (i have certain binges you see;-)
Rah!
> Also just remembered a few more. The
> Torch Unicorn, Graduate, Zep-100. I have two of those 3, but I can't
> remember which two.. Both of mine are Z80 based, one is just a board,
> the other is an external mini-tower case with a hard disk (currently
> not-working) and a floppy etc. as well as the 2p.
D'oh, I'd missed the Graduate off my mental list in previous email, so I think
that's 18 in total:
Acorn Z80
Acorn 6502
Acorn 32016 (256KB/1MB)
Acorn 32016 ('large' - 4MB)
Acorn 32016 (Master Scientific)
Acorn 80186 (Master 512)
Acorn 80286 (ABC 3xx)
Acorn 65C102 (Master Turbo)
Acorn ARM1 (ARM Eval kit, with or without mem expansion)
Acorn A500 (not to be confused with A500 separate machine)
Torch Z80
Torch Z80 Tosca (the one with the local serial port)
Torch 68000 Neptune
Torch 68000 Atlas
Torch Graduate
Casper 68000
Cumana 68008
... plus this Transputer board.
Master Scientifics did exist, but I don't know of anyone who has one. Dave
Moore seems to have the only A500 copro, and there was a chap on c.s.a.h a few
weeks back who seems to have the last of the Casper 68K boards. My ABC310
seems to be the only surviving intact '286 machine.
There are a few unofficial copros about too - I think JGH had a PDP TUBE link
(*pokes JGH*), and Graham Toal built a 6809 copro, and then there was an
article published way back when for using a Dragon 64 as a DIY 6509 copro.
> BTW I know a chap, another FidoNutter way back when, who claims to have
> an *386* internal co-pro in his attic. He promised it to me years ago,
> but I don't like to nag.
Wow. Would love some details on that - wonder where it fitted into things
date-wise? Curious as to what Acorn's justification was too. ARM CPU work must
have been in full swing by then, so I wonder what the justification was? Deffo
a 386 copro for an 8 bitter rather than some sort of PC copro for an ARM machine?
This of course assuming that it's an official board and not just someone's
homebrew project!
>> That's without counting second processors too... oh, and a handful of
>> Torch machines that use the beeb as the I/O processor...
> Yep. An aquaintance had one of those given to him. (a big two-tone brown
> metal case
Ahh yes, one of them under the table in the back room downstairs. Ugliest
machine ever made :)
I'm something of national collector of Torch stuff it seems having ended up
with the contents of their workshop from when they went under... (I can hear
the creaking from the loft)
, with a BBC, a Z80, SASI/SCSI card, MFM convertor the lot
> inside.) I spent a day getting it working. Went up there a few months
> later and he'd gutted the beeb board out to replace a flakey one in a
> standard beeb, given the hard disk (an actual full-height ST506 IIRC) to
> his mate (who had a 286PC!) complete with the 1MHz-SASI and ACB4000
> board, who it transpired had binned the lot, and then he'd thrown the
> case out his backgarden to collect water or sommit! <sigh> I did manage
> to get the Z80 board and the keyboard driver PCB out of it, and the
> ROMS. But thats all. Found them last night.
Urgh. Still, they're not *that* special- the 7xx UNIX machines are the ones to
look for as they have more bells and whistles.
If you ever find a Torch QuadY btw then yell (successor to the QuadX which was
in turn successor to the popular TripleX systems). They only built four of
them...
>> Hopefully I'll have most of it over at Bletchley at some point
> Err.. How involved are you with that?
Right in the thick of it :)
We've got the go-ahead now to take over the whole of H Block (13,000sqft) and
form a national computer museum there, so it's all a bit frantic right now and
will be all year.
> breaker on the way in. Once the fans are up and the caps are charged in
> the scopes (2x Tektronix 551 dualtrace valve mainframes with 4 off 4 way
> beamsplitters at 5MHz. 20Mhz in dual beam mode, and did i mention
> all-valve??? :-)
Oooh, those things are pretty awesome, and bomb-proof. We've got a handful of
old Tek valve 'scopes knocking around. Weigh a ton but still pretty
respectable even today.
Can't remember exactly what we have, but there's definitely a 555 'scope in
the pile, along with a transistor curve tracer. Lots of our old test gear is
currently on loan to the gunpowder mills down at Waltham Abbey, so you'd have
to go down there to see it all...
cheers
Jules