Oldtimer, new to board

[lecroy]

That's awesome, lecroy.  Welcome to the forum.

You should post some pictures of your machine.  If you want, you could even write a little article about your process of setting it up again (with pictures) and I'll put it up on VC&G for everybody to check out.

Benj

Thanks for the welcome.   I may have to do that...  I have not turned that computer on in maybe 15 - 20 years.  I think the last time was to show someone how good they had things now days (back then....)  so it may be time.   What were those commands...

[oldtimer1]

If you can, pull the pcb's out and post pictures.  The rear-most board is a RMTU (remote module and timing unit) the next is the processor board (I believe), and the last two were the memory driver (large power resistors) and the memory board (flat metal shield over the actual core).  I may be wrong, but I understood that the core memory was actually hand threaded in the far-east.  Three or four wires (x-y, and sensing) through each tiny donut shaped core.  As each core was magnetically energized it retained its status until changed allowing the memory to keep it's last loaded state.  Each core was either on or off.  1 or 0.

[lecroy]

I was thinking the video was the last card, but need to look to be sure.  Easy to tell by the two ROMs on it.  I still have a set of spare board for it (plus one extra set of graphic and CPU boards). 

I had two systems at one time and junked one out.  I had a third memory board for the two systems at one time but a friend wanted to try and interface it with a RadioShack Color Computer.   Do you still have one of these or is mine the last one...

Yes, one torroid per bit.  I sold an old NOVI core board several years ago that was 16K.  Now that was something to look at.   The core board was actually made in Japan where the rest was done here.  The core board was the most complex labor intensive board and actually used surface mount.    I guess it was a hint of what was to happen over the next 30 years.   

If you actually came across one of these systems and wanted to try some of the commands...

To access the floppy drives 0&1
.0 or .1
Followed by the Next key

Format
FO,N,M
So FO,M 1  would be format drive 1 and wait for mount
FO,V 0 would be format drive 0 and verify

Pack
Pack was a way to recover lost areas on a floppy as a result of an erase.  It was also used to backup the system.
PA 0,1 mirrors drive 0 onto drive 1
PA,M 0 wait for mount then pack drive 0
PA 1  pack drive 1

Create
Used to create a file.  You could use the file to store data to. 
CR,D 57,7,1,FNAME
This would create a Data file with 57 tracks, an interlace factor of 7, on drive 1, with a file name FNAME. 

Copy
Used to copy a file
CO, 0 1.STARTREK,0

Text
If you wanted to print (and you had a printer)
TEXT,S FNAME


All of the commands were on the floppy.  The machine by itself was of no value.  You could not fit all of the commands onto a single floppy, so you needed to choose your commands based on what you would use the disk for.  What a mess.


I dug out the spare boards and took some pictures of them.  The two boards that make up the CPU are 99% 7400 logic.  At least they are not RTL or DTL.

http://www.putfile.com/album/184043/?page=1

[RedWolf]

Cool stuff, lecroy.  Thanks for sharing the pictures.

By the way, you can attach up to ten pictures to each post on this forum.  To do it, click the "Additional Options" link while posting a message (under the text input area).  After that, you'll see the "Attach:" area where you can upload attachments.

[oldtimer1]

Lecroy,

You are right in that the rear most board is the video....we just called it the RMTU board (it was the Refresh Module and Timing Unit).  It handled the refresh of the video.  The one that you have(assy.# 010- ) is a full 1920 character board.  If the first three numerics of the assy. # had been 009 it would have designated it as a half screen, or 960 character board.  They would slave another crt to the master monitor and each could handle 960 characters off of the logic of the master monitor.  The second pcb from the rear (assy.# 005- )was called the CPU board.

Seems like 30 years since I've seen those.  Wait a minute....what year is this?

Thanks

[RedWolf]

Seems like 30 years since I've seen those.  Wait a minute....what year is this?

I believe it's 1998. 

[lecroy]

I was thinking it was 80 X 25 or 2000 characters.  It's been way too long and I am not sure.   All these boards are spares.  The computer is stored away.  It has the graphics video board in it.   I thought I had two of these, but guess not.    One day I will need to see if I can get it running again.   Would be funny to take a video of it playing StarTrek.  Fire photon, warp warp warp..... 

This was my first computer and I hacked it like no other.   I wrote a disassember for it and started hacking op-codes. Had a good friend who had wrote a RTTY program for it as well.  After seeing his hack,  I wrote a Morse code decode and transmit program that hooked into the RS232 port.  I remember hooking it up to his RTTY filter at his house and being amazed that the thing actually started decoding correctly.  No shareware back then or GNU.  Funny stuff. 

Friend had some friends who were going to make a new memory board for it using SRAM and expand the address bus so they could run BASIC on it.  I was too young and green to pull something like this off back then.  Now day's I bet I could fit the whole system into a single Virtex 4 with room to grow plus up the clock speed to lightning bolt versus what ever that thing ran at.  LOL.

I remember using a reel to reel tape deck to record the modem links to the local BBSs.   Where have all the good times gone?

[sirpaul484]

Greetings, Aljon.  I hope you enjoy these forums then.  I was wondering, do you know if there are any vintage computers that are unique to the Philippines?

[RedWolf]

Unfortunately, Aljon was a spambot.  So was IndiaZer.

[sirpaul484]

Boy, is my face red.   

[RedWolf]

Boy, is my face red.   

Hey, don't be embarrassed.  They were pretty convincing as far as spambots go.  Don't let this incident discourage you from welcoming any new forum members in the future.

Benj