> This reminds me of every TV show and movie I've seen where consoles begin
> exploding on a space ship during a battle. All of this time, I thought that
> was entirely a Hollywood fabrication!
Given all the jenky engineering in the tube circuits inside a DD60, I
am surprised more of them did
> On Jun 6, 2018, at 11:50 PM, Rick Bensene via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> Believe me, the console did spit out a lot of sparks and little blobs of
> molten metal, along with quite a bit of smoke. I still have a small
> scar on my left leg where one of the little blobs of metal burned me
> after
> On Jun 7, 2018, at 3:21 AM, Lars Brinkhoff via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> Paul Koning wrote:
>> I have converted the "chassis tabs 12" wire lists to a VHDL model,
>> which you can find on my Subversion server. Run on GHDL, it
>> demonstrates the behavior of the circuit and reproduces the
> On Jun 7, 2018, at 2:50 AM, Rick Bensene via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> ...
>
> Believe me, the console did spit out a lot of sparks and little blobs of
> molten metal, along with quite a bit of smoke. I still have a small
> scar on my left leg where one of the little blobs of metal burned me
>
Paul Koning wrote:
> I have converted the "chassis tabs 12" wire lists to a VHDL model,
> which you can find on my Subversion server. Run on GHDL, it
> demonstrates the behavior of the circuit and reproduces the documented
> waveforms.
>
> I have also attempted to create a SPICE model of the DD60
Paul wrote, concerning my "fireworks" show on the DD60 console of
Tektronix' Cyber 73 system:
>That's really weird. Here's why. The DD60 only has a single set of
X/Y drive chains. It's all differential, so there are four of
everything, ?>ending up at the pair of X and pair of Y plates of the
On 06/06/2018 05:39 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
> Yes. "Same length wire" is how I first heard it. When I started reading the
> 6600 wire lists I discovered that the reality is far messier. The PPUs
> aren't too bad, that is a 4 phase clock, where consecutive stages are clocked
>
> On Jun 6, 2018, at 8:01 PM, Rick Bensene via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> Speaking of CDC 6x00/Cyber 70-series consoles...
>
> I had a bit of a scary but memorable experience of sitting at the console of
> a Cyber 73, many years ago.
>
> ...
> Anyway, I was sitting at the console one morning,
> On Jun 6, 2018, at 6:30 PM, Jim Manley via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> ...
> Seymour Cray was a genius because he observed that the fastest possible
> circuit is a wire, and that if you use the same length of wire for each bit
> in a word in cables between stages in a computer that you want to go
Speaking of CDC 6x00/Cyber 70-series consoles...
I had a bit of a scary but memorable experience of sitting at the console of a
Cyber 73, many years ago.
My job as a systems operator basically involved watching the console for
magtape mount/dismount requests, printer service requests (e.g.,
Using all of those gates to do brute-force logic for character vector
generation is pretty brilliant. Edison was truly a genius because he
invented and sold the electric light so that people could stay up late at
night to listen to his phonograph invention that he also sold. The
electric lights
> On Jun 6, 2018, at 5:17 PM, Jim Manley via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> ...
> I'm one of the early senior docents at the Computer History Museum in
> SillyCon Valley and yammered on endlessly about the 6600 and its neighbor,
> the 7600, but I never thought about character generation on the displays
When you have "Defense Products Division" in your organization's name,
"high price" comes with the products, ala $10,000 hammers and toilet
seats (and
"Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation" doesn't exactly evoke
thoughts of Walmart pricing, either).
I grew up a few stones' throws from
> On Jun 6, 2018, at 3:40 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> One of the more interesting things about the DD60 display was the use of
> 2C43 "Lighthouse" UHF triode tubes to drive the CRT electrostatic
> deflection.
UHF, yes, but not those. The final state uses 3CX100A5 UHF
One of the more interesting things about the DD60 display was the use of
2C43 "Lighthouse" UHF triode tubes to drive the CRT electrostatic
deflection.
Only being around briefly for the 170 system, I don't know how the
magnetic deflection was driven there.
I imagine that the cost of the DD60 was
> On Jun 6, 2018, at 3:19 PM, Toby Thain wrote:
>
> On 2018-06-06 2:08 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>>
>> ...
>> The block diagram manual shows the waveforms generated by the controller.
>> As you can see, they are pretty angular and straight lined. Each segment
>> (between the
On 2018-06-06 2:08 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>
>
>> On Jun 6, 2018, at 9:48 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi, I'm hoping someone here knows the low-level nitty-gritty on how the
>> characters on the CDC 6600 console CRTs were generated.
>>
>> Thornton, "Design of a
> On Jun 6, 2018, at 12:31 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk
> wrote:
>
>> From: Toby Thain
>
>> It's suggested there (without any proof though) that the CDC used a
>> Fourier process
>> ...
>> I'd be very interested to know what you find out about the circuitry.
>
> Someone very kindly pointed
> On Jun 6, 2018, at 9:48 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk
> wrote:
>
> Hi, I'm hoping someone here knows the low-level nitty-gritty on how the
> characters on the CDC 6600 console CRTs were generated.
>
> Thornton, "Design of a Computer", says "Control of the beam .. is provided by
>
On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 9:20 AM, Toby Thain via cctalk wrote:
> On 2018-06-06 9:48 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:
> > (BTW, the VT11 in DEC's GT40 used bit maps for its built-in character
> geneator,
> > and the hardware did tiny raster zones to display them!)
>
> As does the PDP-1 (point
On 06/06/2018 09:31 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:
> The pronounced rounding which I noticed in the characters must be caused by
> the limited bandpass of the A-D system, amplifiers, etc - it can't actually do
> a sharp corner when going from e.g. a vertical stroke to a diagonal one. Or
>
On 2018-06-06 12:31 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:
> > From: Toby Thain
>
> > It's suggested there (without any proof though) that the CDC used a
> > Fourier process
> > ...
> > I'd be very interested to know what you find out about the circuitry.
>
> Someone very kindly
> From: Toby Thain
> It's suggested there (without any proof though) that the CDC used a
> Fourier process
> ...
> I'd be very interested to know what you find out about the circuitry.
Someone very kindly pointed me at:
On 2018-06-06 9:48 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:
> Hi, I'm hoping someone here knows the low-level nitty-gritty on how the
> characters on the CDC 6600 console CRTs were generated.
>
> Thornton, "Design of a Computer", says "Control of the beam .. is provided by
> electrostatic deflection
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