Mail Archives: geda-user/2016/10/24/18:00:31
On Monday 24 October 2016 16:55:46 Bob Paddock
(graceindustries AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 9:39 AM, Dave McGuire (mcguire AT neurotica DOT com)
>
> [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] <geda-user AT delorie DOT com> wrote:
> > On 10/23/2016 10:24 PM, Atommann (atommann AT gmail DOT com) [via
> >
> > geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
> >> Recently I redraw[1] the cosmac elf microcomputer which was from
> >> the Popular Electronics magazine 1976 August issue. And soldered
> >> one[2], it works right away!
> >
> > Hi! I don't have any suggestions for your problem, but I just
> > have to speak up about the Elf.
>
> Here is some 1802 trivia you'll not find anyplace else.
>
> The predecessor to the 1802 was a two chip set the 1800/1801 available
> only in ceramic packages.
> It was used in some early satellites. Perhaps some other Government
> projects.
>
> As this predates my involvement I don't know the details, some how
> what would become my boss in the future at Matric Limited,
> got a hold of one of these chip sets, probably still has it hidden
> away someplace to his wife's dismay; I expect I'll be the one cleaning
> out this stuff someday after Lee's passing no one else would know what
> it was or where it was stashed in the old building.
>
> Matric got a contract form the government to build a Automatic Roof
> Bolter for Coal Mines as a subcontract to Ingersoll Rand.
> So there is some government connection back to RCA, this is the part
> I'm missing, which got Lee the 1800/1801 chips.
>
> Lee designs a new Coal Mine control for a different contract about the
> time the 1802 is released.
> After the ELF came out, I was hired on to write software for the 1802
> for the new 1802 based control.
>
> Everyone is aware of the impact of the 1802 after the Popular
> Electronics article comes out.
> What people are not aware of is how it died. I don't know what
> happened internally at RCA.
>
> RCA was bought out, Harris etc. Same people setting at the same desks
> with new name on the door of the company for a while.
>
> RCA had a product line called MicroBoards, which were a 44-pin edge
> card bus and a line of industrial membrane keyboards under the name
> Cardinal Technology.
>
> The controls that ran the sub Alvin from Woods Hole Oceanographic
> Institution that found the Titanic was using these boards, because the
> CMOS 1802 and rest of the 4000 family logic was the only thing they
> found that would work through the dew point as the sub descended at
> that time.
>
> Matric bought out the MicroBoard line from RCA (not sure who actually
> owned it at this point.) I flew to New Jersey to learn the testing
> procedures and over see the transfer for the board line. After awhile
> Matric also took over the keyboard line and Matric ended up with all
> of the remaining inventory of the 18xx chips for IO, Graphics, a few
> 1802, some 1805 (1805 had the 1802 stack code hard-coded and a couple
> of other minor changes that escape me right now) etc.
>
> After several years Matric retired the MicroBoard line and a few more
> years retired the keyboard line.
>
> After a few more years setting the the warehouse at Matric all of the
> related stuff including the chips were moved to a storage locker where
> accountant kept their YEARS of paper work. All just tossed in. It
> was no fun the one time I had to go find some 18xx chip to fix
> something.
>
> After I left Matric for my current gig (Resume anyone? Feel it is
> time to move on and do something different), so this part is second
> hand:
>
> Someone from the US State Department showed up at Matric with a
> Cardinal keyboard in hand saying "You *WILL* fix this" (they had be
> told on the phone that the line was no longer supported).
>
> The keyboard failed, I don't know why, and needed some of the chips
> from the storage locker as no one else in the world had them.
>
> The keyboard controlled a Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. Which one I
> do not know. No one wanted to do the paper work to use a new keyboard
> to run the plant.
> So *THAT* keyboard had to be repaired, which it was, it could not even
> be replaced with an identical (not that there were any) keyboard.
>
> So the last vestiges of the once proud 1802 family are decaying away
> in a storage locker to the best of my knowledge (perhaps someone has
> cleaned it out and trashed everything by now, I do not know)...
Neither do I, you were a lot closer to the horse than I. Back in the
Cosmac Super Elf days I was the ACE at a tv station in northern CA, and
watching the commercial production I could see that if I could get rid
of a dub to air tape step, video quality would be much improved while
the trigger tones for a station break machine would be placed digitally
accurately, while any "academy leader" on it would be replaced with a
digitally generated version that I built the video generator to make, so
I laid out an outline of what I wanted to (I wanted to learn how to code
for one of these things they are calling a computer, in early 78 IIRC.)
I took it to the GM and he started drooling as he said words to the
effect of git-r-done. So I ordered the elf, an s-100 backplane, 4k of
static ram ($400 then) a couple s-100 vectorboards and set to work. It
all worked, improving both the quality of the video and the break timing
accuracy by noticeable amounts. 2 years later I'm on down the road
looking for greener grass. But I was back on that real estate 15 years
later with a new wife, and called the station to pass some air with the
Chief, and asked about my little project, and was blown away by the fact
that it was still in quite a few times a day use because no one had come
up with a better gismo yet! I still have the code forms, a text
description that would allow a good tech to duplicate it and a broadcast
audio cart with 2 or 3 copies of the code, ready to be reloaded and ran,
up on a high shelf above my head right now.
That architecture was different, but made sense once you got used to it.
IMO, over the next decade, 3 cpu camps made sense, way more sense than
intel, but intel won that war. TI had their idea and it was actually
simple to implement in the 9900 family, and Motorola beat them like a
white mouthed mule with the 6809 and its program independent code, it
would run just fine wherever you actually loaded it into memory as every
branch instruction jump was relative to where it was at. Then the
clocking wars started, and you all know the rest of the story to date on
that front today.
It was a fun time to be alive. America was the Donalds definition of
great then.
Now I'm 82, retired for 14 years, and the fun is going away along with my
health.
Taxes and death, count on them. :(
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
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