On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 11:21 AM, jim s <[email protected]> wrote: > What is the provenance / source of the panels? > > Mine came from an acquisition by Nick Allen from a collection in Georgia. > I believe there was a Multics installation in Atlanta they were removed > from. > > Multics site: SCSI. Southern Company Services, Inc., Atlanta GA. Nuclear fuel inventory. Installed 1982. (2 L68, 4 MSU0451, 4 MSU0501)
2 Level 68 CPUs, 4 MSU0451 disk drives (309 kg, removable pack, 156 Million 9 bit bytes), 2 MSU0501 disk drives (non-removable pack, 1101 Million 9 bit bytes) The panels on the 6180 at USL were all inside side access panels for one of > the rows of hardware boxes. One box panel was usually exposed with the door > removed, but it could be closed up. There were problems which required > access to one of the panels frequently in operations, so it was seldom > closed. > > We probably could get access to Dockmaster with some advance arrangement > and good will on the part of the CHM when they have time to arrange access > to the storage to which it was moved to see actual installed panels. > > I agree, the black panel has about the only interesting display. > > +David Griffith > > I might also suggest that once David Griffith finishes porting the PDP 10 > Panda panel and has that design working and integrated that there may be > enough blink'n lights there to display a satisfying 6180 display on a > normal desktop case. > > the advantage is that it is at least already 36 bits and has some of the > nonsense of having that bit count worked out already. I'd think we > (someone) could fork and add a second bank of lights, or use two of the > Panda usb devices to put out a lot of information about a 72 bit 6180. > > His main problem now is with interfacing and coding PDP 10 assembly code > which is obviously not useful for re-purposing it for Multics use anyway, > and is internal to SIMh PDP10 emulation. > > If a lot of people who are interested in blinking Multics Honeywell 6180 > displays were interested it would contribute a lot to him selling out a run > of his board kits. > > I don't think there is that much interest, but I'll keep a weather eye out. Interfacing to beaglebone would be simpler for me, as I already have the infrastructure in-place for my simulated display. (All of the needed data is in a shared memory segment, a standalone program just scrapes the data and sends it out.) -- Charles
