Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[dwight]

Ah PolyPaks!
The parts were always guaranteed. If they were bad,
you could send them back and then you could test the next
one.
They surely created the term "You-Test-Em".
Dwight
 


From: cctalk <cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org> on behalf of Jon Elson 
<el...@pico-systems.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 24, 2016 3:51 PM
To: gene...@classiccmp.org; Discussion@
Subject: Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

On 04/24/2016 03:33 PM, ben wrote:
> On 4/23/2016 8:32 PM, dwight wrote:
>> I recall going to Mike Quinn's and seeing barrels of RTL.
>> I wish now that I'd bought a bunch of them.
>> Most DTL can be replace by a TTL except a few with different
>> pinouts and the NAND with the diode expand pin.
>> My oldest equipment has a mix of DTL and TTL.
>> Dwight
>
> All I ever saw was the ads like this.
> https://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/4455981283/
>
Wrong coast!  Poly Paks was an East Coast outfit.
Mike Quinn's was at the Oakland, CA airport.  I first saw it
in the early 1990's, I think, when it was still in the WW-II
temp building on the airport property.  You were literally
walking on 3" of crunched circuit boards in the back rooms!
There were large tables covered with circuit boards and
small units, and the stuff that slid off the tables just
became the floor covering.

They had tons of boards out of computers and electronic
equipment. The best stuff was kept in front in glass cases
next to the cash register.

Jon

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Jon Elson]

On 04/24/2016 03:33 PM, ben wrote:

On 4/23/2016 8:32 PM, dwight wrote:

I recall going to Mike Quinn's and seeing barrels of RTL.
I wish now that I'd bought a bunch of them.
Most DTL can be replace by a TTL except a few with different
pinouts and the NAND with the diode expand pin.
My oldest equipment has a mix of DTL and TTL.
Dwight


All I ever saw was the ads like this.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/4455981283/


Wrong coast!  Poly Paks was an East Coast outfit.
Mike Quinn's was at the Oakland, CA airport.  I first saw it 
in the early 1990's, I think, when it was still in the WW-II 
temp building on the airport property.  You were literally 
walking on 3" of crunched circuit boards in the back rooms!  
There were large tables covered with circuit boards and 
small units, and the stuff that slid off the tables just 
became the floor covering.


They had tons of boards out of computers and electronic 
equipment. The best stuff was kept in front in glass cases 
next to the cash register.


Jon

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[ben]

On 4/23/2016 8:32 PM, dwight wrote:

I recall going to Mike Quinn's and seeing barrels of RTL.
I wish now that I'd bought a bunch of them.
Most DTL can be replace by a TTL except a few with different
pinouts and the NAND with the diode expand pin.
My oldest equipment has a mix of DTL and TTL.
Dwight


All I ever saw was the ads like this.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/4455981283/

Ben

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[dwight]

I recall going to Mike Quinn's and seeing barrels of RTL.
I wish now that I'd bought a bunch of them.
Most DTL can be replace by a TTL except a few with different
pinouts and the NAND with the diode expand pin.
My oldest equipment has a mix of DTL and TTL.
Dwight

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Brent Hilpert]

On 2016-Apr-23, at 4:15 PM, Jon Elson wrote:

> On 04/23/2016 05:46 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>> On 04/23/2016 02:34 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:
>> 
>>> I was surprised by the early date code on the 7490s when I ran across
>>> them in a piece of test equipment.
>> What was surprising to me is how quickly the industry standardized on
>> the TI 7400/5400 parts.   Early (ca 1967) Moto databooks had MTTL I,
>> MTTL II and MTTL III that were essentially sui generis.  By 1969, the
>> MC7400/5400 had pretty much taken over.  Things moved really quickly
>> back then.
>> 
>> 
> Lots of designers and system manufacturers were VERY leery of adopting 
> anything single-source.
> When a number of chip makers (Nat Semi, Motorola, Signetics, Fairchild) all 
> jumped onto making compatible 7400 parts, the industry had the confidence 
> that parts in the series would be available for a long time.  Back in the 
> late 60's, early 70's the industry was moving at a breakneck pace, and chip 
> families had very short lifetimes before their makers hopped onto the next 
> new thing. (Oh, yeah, you said the same thing in the last sentence!)

Fellow here did some research into the 181 history and came to a similar 
conclusion:
http://ygg-it.tripod.com/id1.html
He suggests TI being the first to contract for a second-source sent the buyers 
(esp. military) to the 7400 series.

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Jon Elson]

On 04/23/2016 05:46 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:

On 04/23/2016 02:34 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:


I was surprised by the early date code on the 7490s when I ran across
them in a piece of test equipment.

What was surprising to me is how quickly the industry standardized on
the TI 7400/5400 parts.   Early (ca 1967) Moto databooks had MTTL I,
MTTL II and MTTL III that were essentially sui generis.  By 1969, the
MC7400/5400 had pretty much taken over.  Things moved really quickly
back then.


Lots of designers and system manufacturers were VERY leery 
of adopting anything single-source.
When a number of chip makers (Nat Semi, Motorola, Signetics, 
Fairchild) all jumped onto making compatible 7400 parts, the 
industry had the confidence that parts in the series would 
be available for a long time.  Back in the late 60's, early 
70's the industry was moving at a breakneck pace, and chip 
families had very short lifetimes before their makers hopped 
onto the next new thing. (Oh, yeah, you said the same thing 
in the last sentence!)


Jon

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Jon Elson]

On 04/23/2016 04:34 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:



The interesting thing was that there seemed to be a distrust of LSI
chips early on.  I recall working on a project around 1973, where the
lead engineer preferred to design his own UART from SSI rather than use
one of the new UART chips.

Well, he may have been worried about availability, or 
possibly the part going obsolete.
Those are other issues that a designer might be concerned 
about, as well as reliability.


Jon

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Chuck Guzis]

On 04/23/2016 02:34 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:

> I was surprised by the early date code on the 7490s when I ran across
> them in a piece of test equipment.

What was surprising to me is how quickly the industry standardized on
the TI 7400/5400 parts.   Early (ca 1967) Moto databooks had MTTL I,
MTTL II and MTTL III that were essentially sui generis.  By 1969, the
MC7400/5400 had pretty much taken over.  Things moved really quickly
back then.

I recall the mW MRTL "experimenter's pack" with HEP part numbers.  IIRC,
about half the projects in the accompanying booklet used the RTL stuff
in analog, not digital applications.

--Chuck

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Brent Hilpert]

On 2016-Apr-23, at 10:06 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:

> On 04/23/2016 05:41 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>> From: Brent Hilpert
>> 
>>> I'd say the 74181 (1970) deserves a mention here. Simpler (no
>>> register component, ALU only) but it pretty much kicked off the
>>> start of IC-level bit slicing.
> 
> I recall reading about the 74181 introduction back in the day--it
> created great excitement and speculation about how far the industry was
> from a computer-on-a-chip.  I think I still have a couple of the things
> in my hellbox.

In 1972 or 1973 one of Radio Electronics or Popular Electronics had a 
construction article for the E Instruments Digi-Designer.
If you recall, the Digi-Designer was essentially a vehicle for E's new 
plug-in breadboard.  For those younger, yes, -those- plug-in breadboards, that 
are still the most prevalent hardware prototyping/educational technique today.

AIR, the 74181 was featured as an experiment to wire up on the Digi-Designer in 
that article.


> In the day, I'm not certain that TTL had the edge on integration,
> however.  It always seemed that DTL and RTL had the edge in complexity.
> Before the 181, I was playing around with the RTL 796 dual full adder
> and an 8-bit Fairchild DTL memory--IIRC the latter used a 7V clock.

I think TTL was quickly on par for density with DTL & RTL and overtook them by 
the late 60s.

I have 7490s (decade counter) from late-1966 and early-1967, and many TTL MSI 
functions were there by 1969.
The 7484 (16-bit memory) is listed in the TI 1969 TTL databook.
RTL was passe by then and DTL was heading that way. I don't think DTL got any 
more complex than such as the 8-bit memory you mention, at least in the main.

I was surprised by the early date code on the 7490s when I ran across them in a 
piece of test equipment.




> The interesting thing was that there seemed to be a distrust of LSI
> chips early on.  I recall working on a project around 1973, where the
> lead engineer preferred to design his own UART from SSI rather than use
> one of the new UART chips.
> 
> --Chuck
> 
> 
> 
> 

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Jon Elson]

On 04/23/2016 11:29 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:

 > From: Jon Elson

 > The 11/45 and 11/70 are mostly the same processor. ...
 > the data paths boards and FPU are the same part numbers

'Yes' to the FPP (well, there are two versions, the FP11-B and FP11-C, but
they are both identical in the two machines).

'No' to the data paths, though: e.g. the M8100 in the /45 (the board with the
74S181's on it) is replaced by the M8130 in the /70. The two are _very_
similar, but I suspect not interchangeable (examing the prints shows minor
differences).

OK, didn't know that!

Jon

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Noel Chiappa]

> AFAIK, the only non-FPP board in the CPU which is interchangeable
> between the two machines is the M8132 (instruction register decode &
> condition codes)

So it seems like there's an(other) error in the DEC documentation.

If one looks at 11/70 Maintenance Manual (EK-11070-MM-002), it says (pg. 1-3)
that the KB11-C (11/70 later CPU) contains an M8133 ROM and ROM Control
board, the same as the KB11-B (earlier CPU, pg. 1-4), _but_ ...

The KB11-C prints include the drawings for the M8123 (also used by the
KB11-D, the later /45 CPU). Other manuals confirm that the KB11-C uses the
M8123 (see, e.g., the KB11-A,D Maintainence Manual, EK-KB11A-MM-004, pg 1-1).

I _thought_ the KB11-D used two of the same boards as the KB11-C, but then,
when I went to check, to be sure I had the correct info (before sending out
my email intended to "just want to be accurate", sigh), I relied on the DEC
manual... :-(

Oh well, that's what I get for relying on DEC manuals! :-)

Noel

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Jon Elson

> The 11/45 and 11/70 are mostly the same processor. ...
> the data paths boards and FPU are the same part numbers

'Yes' to the FPP (well, there are two versions, the FP11-B and FP11-C, but
they are both identical in the two machines).

'No' to the data paths, though: e.g. the M8100 in the /45 (the board with the
74S181's on it) is replaced by the M8130 in the /70. The two are _very_
similar, but I suspect not interchangeable (examing the prints shows minor
differences).

AFAIK, the only non-FPP board in the CPU which is interchangeable between the
two machines is the M8132 (instruction register decode & condition codes) -
and only to the KB11-D /45 variant, not the -A.

{As always, just want to be accurate! :-}

Noel

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Jon Elson]

On 04/23/2016 07:41 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:

 > From: Brent Hilpert

 > I'd say the 74181 (1970) deserves a mention here. Simpler (no register
 > component, ALU only) but it pretty much kicked off the start of
 > IC-level bit slicing.

Yes, it was used in quite a few machines. Among the PDP-11's alone, it is
found in the -11/45, /05, /40, /04 and /34, to name a few that I checked
quickly, and almost certainly others too (e.g. /70).

The 11/45 and 11/70 are mostly the same processor.  
Definitely, the data paths boards and FPU are the same part 
numbers.


Jon

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Jon Elson]

On 04/22/2016 11:10 PM, Jon Elson wrote:

Yikes, too many typos, let me try over!
I built a 32-bit micro-engine for a project that was 
eventually going to be an IBM 360-like CPU.
I picked the 360, not because it was the greatest design, 
but it was VERY well laid-out and would be easy to write 
efficient microcode for.  I used the 2903 with 2910 
controller.  I was able to get it to run at 8 MHz, with 
3-address operations running at 6 MHz.


But, the project got bogged down, at a certain point, I 
realized HOW MUCH more work lay ahead of me to get a 
working system.  I had to add 2 more features to the 
micro-engine - a 256-way branch from the op-code, and some 
OR gates to OR in the register address fields.  Then, I 
had to build a system bus and memory interface.
(I was going to make the I/O architecture much more like a 
PDP-11 than the 360 channel architecture.)  Then, I had to 
design a general-purpose peripheral controller.  I had a 
VERY rough sketch for about a 20-chip micro-machine using 
(probably) 3X byte-wide EPROMS for instructions) that 
would hopefully run at 4 MHz.  Then, I had to build a SCSI 
controller (I already had a SASI disk on my S-100 system), 
a serial mux and a tape controller.
Finally, I had to write at least a primitive OS and figure 
out how to come up with compilers for it.  Had I known 
that UNIX-360 existed, I might have tried to make some 
kind of port of that. But, obviously, YEARS of work would 
have been needed to make it usable.


See http://pico-systems.com/stories/1982.html for some 
pics and description of it.


Jon

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Brent Hilpert

> I'd say the 74181 (1970) deserves a mention here. Simpler (no register
> component, ALU only) but it pretty much kicked off the start of
> IC-level bit slicing.

Yes, it was used in quite a few machines. Among the PDP-11's alone, it is
found in the -11/45, /05, /40, /04 and /34, to name a few that I checked
quickly, and almost certainly others too (e.g. /70).

Noel

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Chuck Guzis]

On 04/22/2016 09:36 PM, ben wrote:
> On 4/22/2016 10:17 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:

> What about Radio Shack? $2 for 7400 or 50 cents a gate. Now the
> latest INTEL product has how many gates again?

By the mid 80s, some of us were trying to think of creative uses for the
Z80, which was then going for less than 75 cents in OEM quantities.  By
then it was finding its way into PC peripherals.

Time moves on.  I'm holding one of those Intel souvenir 80386/80486 key
fobs with the corresponding dice embedded in resin.  It really is
startling to see how much larger the 486 die is--and the 486 after
introduction didn't cost proportionately more than the 80386.

--Chuck

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Eric Smith]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 10:03 PM, ben  wrote:
>> Not exactly bit-slice, but how about the National IMP-16 chip set?

It's bit-slice. The RALU chips were four bits wide, and were used in
at least three different processor architectures, the IMP-4, IMP-8,
and IMP-16. (Despite the similarity of naming, the actual
architectures aren't very similar.)

The CROM (Control ROM) could be custom microcoded for other architectures.

> Too Early ,

Not too early to be bit-slice. The DEC PDP-6 was implemented as
bit-slice, but not with ICs.

> Too Slow ,

It looks amazingly slow now, but compared to other things available in
1974, it was reasonable.

> Too $$$ is my guess.

Actually it was cheap, again by comparison to contemporary things.

> With out the 6800/6502 8080/Z80 price wars, how much would a 8 bit
> CPU be in the late 70s? $75?

$395 for an 8080 in 1974. Under $20 for most 8-bitters by the end of 1979.

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Chuck Guzis]

On 04/22/2016 09:03 PM, ben wrote:

> Too Early , Too Slow , Too $$$ is my guess. With out the 6800/6502
> 8080/Z80 price wars, how much would a 8 bit CPU be in the late 70s?
> $75?

Given the price of memory and other "then-LSI" in the late 70s, $75
doesn't sound unreasonable at all.  NSC did bring out the PACE, which
was essentially a single-chip version of an IMP-16 implementation.

But, like all things National, they didn't know how to sell any of their
own stuff.

--Chuck

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Jon Elson]

On 04/22/2016 10:36 PM, ben wrote:


I think the problem was memory at the time. What was the 
use having
a FAST bitslice machine, but real memory at the time was 
SMALL and SLOw.
Well, I had 45 ns static RAM for control store on my 2903 
bit slice machine.  Yes, those were 1K x 4 chips, and I put 
heat sinks on them, they ran that hot.  Obviously, large 
main memory was going to have to run slower.


Jon

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[ben]

On 4/22/2016 8:54 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:

Eric Smith mentioned:

[2901 A, B, and C, CMOS versions]
[2903 and 29203]
[Intel 3001 and 3002]
[MMI 5701/6701]
[Motorola MC10800]


I'd add the Texas Instruments SN74S481, SN54LS481 and SN74LS481 TTL 4
bit slices. The Schottky version had a 90ns clock cycle and the low
power versions 120ns. These were 48 pins chips and didn't have an
internal register bank like the 2901. The idea was that you implemented
a memory to memory architecture like the TMS9900.

The TI SBP0400A and SBP0401A were I2L 4 bit slices. The 400 had an
internal pipeline register while the 401 was designed for external
pipelining. ALU operations took 240ns at 200mW. It had an 8 register
bank besides the working register.

All I know about these is what I read in "The Bipolar Micromputer
Components Data Book", December 1977 edition. I have no idea if these
chips were actually shipped or if they were used in any product.

-- Jecel


I think the problem was memory at the time. What was the use having
a FAST bitslice machine, but real memory at the time was SMALL and SLOw.
Then if you could get a nice machine, you could never get out of the
School or Lab home  with you.
The  Lilith computer comes to mind here.
Ben.
PS:  http://www.projectoberon.com/   A computer design A few generations
after Lilith. Here a FPGA risc cpu and fast static memory.

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Chuck Guzis]

On 04/22/2016 07:54 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:

> I'd add the Texas Instruments SN74S481, SN54LS481 and SN74LS481 TTL
> 4 bit slices. The Schottky version had a 90ns clock cycle and the
> low power versions 120ns. These were 48 pins chips and didn't have
> an internal register bank like the 2901. The idea was that you
> implemented a memory to memory architecture like the TMS9900.


Not exactly bit-slice, but how about the National IMP-16 chip set?

--Chuck

bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr.]

Eric Smith mentioned:
> [2901 A, B, and C, CMOS versions]
> [2903 and 29203]
> [Intel 3001 and 3002]
> [MMI 5701/6701]
> [Motorola MC10800]

I'd add the Texas Instruments SN74S481, SN54LS481 and SN74LS481 TTL 4
bit slices. The Schottky version had a 90ns clock cycle and the low
power versions 120ns. These were 48 pins chips and didn't have an
internal register bank like the 2901. The idea was that you implemented
a memory to memory architecture like the TMS9900.

The TI SBP0400A and SBP0401A were I2L 4 bit slices. The 400 had an
internal pipeline register while the 401 was designed for external
pipelining. ALU operations took 240ns at 200mW. It had an 8 register
bank besides the working register.

All I know about these is what I read in "The Bipolar Micromputer
Components Data Book", December 1977 edition. I have no idea if these
chips were actually shipped or if they were used in any product.

-- Jecel

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[William Donzelli]

I do, back at my old house. I even have a bunch of the old 10G line of
chips, unused. They came out of Collins surplus back in the early
1990s.

--
Will

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 8:37 PM, Eric Smith  wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 6:25 PM, William Donzelli  wrote:
>> There was a 29G01 offered for a short time. Worth several times their
>> weight in gold.
>
> Yes, I forgot about those. Gallium arsenide MESFET for very high
> speed. Anyone have data sheets for that family?

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Eric Smith]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 6:25 PM, William Donzelli  wrote:
> There was a 29G01 offered for a short time. Worth several times their
> weight in gold.

Yes, I forgot about those. Gallium arsenide MESFET for very high
speed. Anyone have data sheets for that family?

Re: bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[William Donzelli]

There was a 29G01 offered for a short time. Worth several times their
weight in gold.

--
Will

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 8:15 PM, Eric Smith  wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:07 AM, Raymond Wiker  wrote:
>> I was a bit surprised to see that it used 2901 with a date code of 1985 -
>> the 2901 was introduced 10 years before.
>
> The 2901 was the workhorse bit-slice data path chip for many years.
> The A, B, and C suffix parts were progressively faster variants
> introduced later. Eventually there were CMOS versions, and 16-bit-wide
> versions.  While AMD introduced the 2903 and 29203 as functionally
> improved (but not directly compatible) 4-bit parts, they weren't
> nearly as widely used as the 2901.
>
> Most other bit-slice parts can be considered "also-ran" at best, with
> the Intel 3001 and 3002 probably being the next most successful.  MMI
> tried to beat AMD to market with the 5701/6701, which was very similar
> to (but not compatible with) the 2901, but they were late to market
> and AMD won.
>
> Motorola offered the MC10800 ECL bit slice series, which were
> significantly faster at introduction than the contemporary Am2900
> parts, but AMD kept introducing faster 2901s.  Some later 2901
> variants from AMD and National Semiconductor actually used ECL
> internally, but had normal TTL I/O, but the CMOS that followed were
> even faster than those.

bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[Eric Smith]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:07 AM, Raymond Wiker  wrote:
> I was a bit surprised to see that it used 2901 with a date code of 1985 -
> the 2901 was introduced 10 years before.

The 2901 was the workhorse bit-slice data path chip for many years.
The A, B, and C suffix parts were progressively faster variants
introduced later. Eventually there were CMOS versions, and 16-bit-wide
versions.  While AMD introduced the 2903 and 29203 as functionally
improved (but not directly compatible) 4-bit parts, they weren't
nearly as widely used as the 2901.

Most other bit-slice parts can be considered "also-ran" at best, with
the Intel 3001 and 3002 probably being the next most successful.  MMI
tried to beat AMD to market with the 5701/6701, which was very similar
to (but not compatible with) the 2901, but they were late to market
and AMD won.

Motorola offered the MC10800 ECL bit slice series, which were
significantly faster at introduction than the contemporary Am2900
parts, but AMD kept introducing faster 2901s.  Some later 2901
variants from AMD and National Semiconductor actually used ECL
internally, but had normal TTL I/O, but the CMOS that followed were
even faster than those.