As a debugging/operations aid, they had attached the overflow bit to a
speaker so it could generate 1-bit sound - one demo they gave me was a
program to calculate e that played a sound for each iteration so you
could hear the steady progress. But of course if there is a sound
output, no one can avoid playing with it. There were numerous pieces
of computationally generated music composed for the machine (on paper
tape), but also a program for playing a recorded, real-life sound in
1-bit
The collection includes numerous other computers including pretty much
the entire RC line, as well as pre-computer tabulators, keypunches,
paper handling machine and the like. The artifacts are well-ordered
and in large part well labeled for even the uninitiated visitor.
Everything is laid out quite thoughtfully, with wide aisles, in a
large, well-lit basement. There are interpretive displays here and
there, as well as a small but appealing lecture/display area.
The datamuseum.dk collection represents 25 years of accumulation, I
was told. But more importantly, I think their work demonstrates a
very well-considered approach for presenting the history of the
collection's machines to visitors.
My hosts were also warm and wonderful people who clearly love what
they do and enjoy sharing it. They made me feel among friends, if not
family. :-)
Thanks, Finn and everyone else (sorry, I'm bad with names), for
sharing your time and your passion with me! -- Ian
On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 12:43 AM, Nico de Jong <n...@farumdata.dk>
wrote:
I share your favourite(s). In the danish IT-museum-to-be (
www.datamuseum.dk) we have two P857-based systems running. We
have
lots of spare parts and nearly all documentation, so if you need
something, you are welcome to ask.
I'm presently building a "table top" version of a system with the
P857 CPU, 35cm H x 60 deep x 19" wide, with a dual 8" floppy drive,
and a 80486 PC for program loading etc.
The system is built into a P859 box. The P859 CPU is special, as it
has a
V24 connection that goes to a LED display with push buttons. Very
nice indeed.
For that system, I have developped a Windows based Assembler, and a
Windows based simulator. The simulator takes assembled programs (in
my system called *.OBJ) and the original source. You can then step
through the instructions, and follow them through the text file on
the PC.
I am presently trying to execute various utility programs, sent to me
by a Belgion ex-Philips employee, who did a lot of work on the P800
series.
I myself worked with the P800 series, disguised as the PTS6800 series
for
4-5 years full time.
The PTS 6800 series was used extensively in banks, mainly in
Scandinavia, Greece, Barclay SouthAfrica, Philippines. In Sweden also
in the airline industry. In Denmark it was used mainly by local
authorities, PTT, Railway (ticket printing), and some other
small-time projects. In one of the project it was connected to an
ATM (fun
project).
I know of one collector in the Netherlands (Camiel), and some guys
who have no hardware but a lot of knowledge /Nico
----- Original Message -----
From: tony duell
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2015 7:31 AM
Subject: RE: out-of-mainstream minis
Not all minis came from the States :-)
One of my favourite non-mainstream families is the Philips P800
series.
It's
a 16 bit machine with 16 registers (0 is the program counter
and 15
is the stack pointer, rest are mostly general purpose) and
separate
I/O instructions (not memory-mapped I/O). There were several
models
with various implementations of the architecture, including
P850 (TTL, hardwired not microcoded)
P855, P852, P856, P857, P860 (TTL, microcoded)
P851 (Custom bitslice ICs, microcoded)
P854 (AM2900 bitslice, microcoded)
P853 I think (Single chip)
No, I don't have all of those...
-tony
=
