RE: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question
If it's an AMLC ... I'm sure an engineer on (I think) news:comp.sys.prime could tell us, but I'm guessing it must have been one of the big boxes. We had AMLCs on our 25/30, But by the time of the 850 an 950 I think they were using ICS boards. So - we got our first rabbit mid-83? that was post-AMLC I would guess. Of course, the old machines were still around so AMLCs would still have been around, but they would have been disappearing by then. I'd love to get my hands on an old rabbit, but I doubt there are many about :-( Cheers, Wol -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scott Richardson Sent: 23 February 2004 04:39 To: U2 Users Discussion List Subject: Re: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question Wow. I appreciate the OT, Dawn! I used to work at Pr1me, started in manufacturing in 1979, doing incoming quality control on their multi-layered printed circuit boards. This board may even have a stamp on it, showing who actually tested the board through the process. I moved up to Marketing Technical Support at the Corporate Marketing Support Center from manufacturing in 1981, and was there until 1983 - when I went off to join Pr1me VAR MADIC, (manufacturing applications package), written in Pr1me INFORMATION. I ended up coming back to Prime in 1986, after MADIC had business difficulties, and was a founding technical member of the PICK to Pr1me INFORMATION Conversion Reseller Support Center. I would dare to say that you are looking a an AMLC - Asynchronous Multi Line Controller card. Serial tty I/O board, four connectors of four Asynch ports per, yeilding 16, (0-15), total ports. I think 9600 baud maximum, (maybe 19.2K?). If I remember correctly, these are four layer, maybe 6 layers, of substrate/circuitry. The 0-3, 4-7, 8-11, 12-15 side would be sticking out the back, where cable assemblies would connect up to them. The opposite side of the board - with two longer gold tipped fingers connectors are, would be plugged into the backplane, which is how all the boards would talk to each other; Memory at the top,CPU board sets next, disk controllers communications controllers next, and asynchronous termial controllers next. Of course, power supplies at the base. These backplanes were basicially printed circuit boards, yet some of them still had wire-wrapped connections on them. These would be the boards that handled serial tty RS232 ports to dumb terminals, BeeHives (PT-45), Perkin Elmer OWL, PT200's in the later years. Do you recall what model of Pr1me 50 Series it came from? What company were you working at that was using it? I hope this helps provide you with some historical technical tidbits to share with the young whippa-snappers! Regards, Scott Richardson Senior Systems Engineer / Consultant Marlborough, MA 01752 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://home.comcast.net/~CheetahFTL/CC eFax: 208-445-1259 *** This transmission is intended for the named recipient only. It may contain private and confidential information. If this has come to you in error you must not act on anything disclosed in it, nor must you copy it, modify it, disseminate it in any way, or show it to anyone. Please e-mail the sender to inform us of the transmission error or telephone ECA International immediately and delete the e-mail from your information system. Telephone numbers for ECA International offices are: Sydney +61 (0)2 9911 7799, Hong Kong + 852 2121 2388, London +44 (0)20 7351 5000 and New York +1 212 582 2333. *** -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question
That's probably an AMLC board -- Asynchronous Multilline Controller. These supported 16 serial lines, for terminals, modems and often printers. Matti -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Dawn M. Wolthuis Sent: 23 February 2004 03:01 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question I'm doing a talk tomorrow to college CS majors (name of talk is: IT is How it Seams -- at least I'm able to entertain myself with the double double meaning) I thought I'd bring in some of the odds and ends I've acquired over the years and one is a board from a Pr1me computer I worked on. It was gifted to me when the machine was retired. However, I'm a s/w kinda guy and I don't know a cpu board from a memory board from anything else. I figured this was the best place to ask about prime hardware, but sorry for being a little off-topic. It is an 18 inch-ish square green board with black chips and few white ones that say Bechman on them. The black ones are at least three different sizes. Along one side it has stickers that say LINES 0-3 ... LINES 12-15. That seems like a big clue, but I figured someone here would know what such a board might have been called. Thanks in advance. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question
snip Scott Richardson wrote... I would dare to say that you are looking a an AMLC - Asynchronous Multi Line Controller card. /snip And some sadistic cohort of yours decided to pin these out for DCE for some reason. Or maybe it was the guy that designed the 4-way wire looms. My fingers still throb in memory of repinning to swap 2 and 3... Ouch. Jim -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question
My guess is that it is a Serial Port Controller Board. I used to know what all the Royale/Reality/Sequel boards were. NIC's surely saves a lot of space now. my 1 cent. P.S. Howja get a gig like that. Is it the History Channel aspect of the CS program. I and i'm sure others could talk hours on the hardware issues we had to deal with. My favorite exercise was having to put my finger against the 1/2 inch tapehead of the open reel-to-reel Microdatas when reading tapes from one system to another. The tape would stream back and forth trying to catch its parity until just enough pressure by my fingers would cause those 8 tracks (not to be confused with 8-tracks) to line up. Jurrasic Pick at its best. Then along came Cipher drives and i put my fingers to better use. My oldest piece of nostalgia is a 1972 Microdata manual pre-Pick. It was a process controller looking for something to do. - Original Message - From: Dawn M. Wolthuis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 10:00 PM Subject: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question I'm doing a talk tomorrow to college CS majors (name of talk is: IT is How it Seams -- at least I'm able to entertain myself with the double double meaning) I thought I'd bring in some of the odds and ends I've acquired over the years and one is a board from a Pr1me computer I worked on. It was gifted to me when the machine was retired. However, I'm a s/w kinda guy and I don't know a cpu board from a memory board from anything else. I figured this was the best place to ask about prime hardware, but sorry for being a little off-topic. It is an 18 inch-ish square green board with black chips and few white ones that say Bechman on them. The black ones are at least three different sizes. Along one side it has stickers that say LINES 0-3 ... LINES 12-15. That seems like a big clue, but I figured someone here would know what such a board might have been called. Thanks in advance. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question
Thanks, Mark. I actually did solder pins, crawl through ceilings, thread the tape drives by hand, etc, but I enjoy computer hardware as much as I enjoy car engines (not at all) except as props for related stories. I got the gig because I recently moved to a city of 7,000 with lots of cows pigs and also a small college. There are not a lot of special guest speakers for the CS club at the college among the pigs and cows. It isn't going to be a history lesson, but a discussion about the seams in the fabric of our systems (quoting Gates from his seamless computing speech at comdex last year). I'll look at how these seams changed in going to the network is the computer infrastructure. But I'll carry with me a portable disk pack, this board, and my Pr1me Oracle 9-track tape 'cause I can weave in some fine stories. Smiles. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Johnson Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 9:25 PM To: U2 Users Discussion List Subject: Re: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question My guess is that it is a Serial Port Controller Board. I used to know what all the Royale/Reality/Sequel boards were. NIC's surely saves a lot of space now. my 1 cent. P.S. Howja get a gig like that. Is it the History Channel aspect of the CS program. I and i'm sure others could talk hours on the hardware issues we had to deal with. My favorite exercise was having to put my finger against the 1/2 inch tapehead of the open reel-to-reel Microdatas when reading tapes from one system to another. The tape would stream back and forth trying to catch its parity until just enough pressure by my fingers would cause those 8 tracks (not to be confused with 8-tracks) to line up. Jurrasic Pick at its best. Then along came Cipher drives and i put my fingers to better use. My oldest piece of nostalgia is a 1972 Microdata manual pre-Pick. It was a process controller looking for something to do. - Original Message - From: Dawn M. Wolthuis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 10:00 PM Subject: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question I'm doing a talk tomorrow to college CS majors (name of talk is: IT is How it Seams -- at least I'm able to entertain myself with the double double meaning) I thought I'd bring in some of the odds and ends I've acquired over the years and one is a board from a Pr1me computer I worked on. It was gifted to me when the machine was retired. However, I'm a s/w kinda guy and I don't know a cpu board from a memory board from anything else. I figured this was the best place to ask about prime hardware, but sorry for being a little off-topic. It is an 18 inch-ish square green board with black chips and few white ones that say Bechman on them. The black ones are at least three different sizes. Along one side it has stickers that say LINES 0-3 ... LINES 12-15. That seems like a big clue, but I figured someone here would know what such a board might have been called. Thanks in advance. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question
Wow. I appreciate the OT, Dawn! I used to work at Pr1me, started in manufacturing in 1979, doing incoming quality control on their multi-layered printed circuit boards. This board may even have a stamp on it, showing who actually tested the board through the process. I moved up to Marketing Technical Support at the Corporate Marketing Support Center from manufacturing in 1981, and was there until 1983 - when I went off to join Pr1me VAR MADIC, (manufacturing applications package), written in Pr1me INFORMATION. I ended up coming back to Prime in 1986, after MADIC had business difficulties, and was a founding technical member of the PICK to Pr1me INFORMATION Conversion Reseller Support Center. I would dare to say that you are looking a an AMLC - Asynchronous Multi Line Controller card. Serial tty I/O board, four connectors of four Asynch ports per, yeilding 16, (0-15), total ports. I think 9600 baud maximum, (maybe 19.2K?). If I remember correctly, these are four layer, maybe 6 layers, of substrate/circuitry. The 0-3, 4-7, 8-11, 12-15 side would be sticking out the back, where cable assemblies would connect up to them. The opposite side of the board - with two longer gold tipped fingers connectors are, would be plugged into the backplane, which is how all the boards would talk to each other; Memory at the top,CPU board sets next, disk controllers communications controllers next, and asynchronous termial controllers next. Of course, power supplies at the base. These backplanes were basicially printed circuit boards, yet some of them still had wire-wrapped connections on them. These would be the boards that handled serial tty RS232 ports to dumb terminals, BeeHives (PT-45), Perkin Elmer OWL, PT200's in the later years. Do you recall what model of Pr1me 50 Series it came from? What company were you working at that was using it? I hope this helps provide you with some historical technical tidbits to share with the young whippa-snappers! Regards, Scott Richardson Senior Systems Engineer / Consultant Marlborough, MA 01752 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://home.comcast.net/~CheetahFTL/CC eFax: 208-445-1259 - Original Message - From: Dawn M. Wolthuis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 10:00 PM Subject: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question I'm doing a talk tomorrow to college CS majors (name of talk is: IT is How it Seams -- at least I'm able to entertain myself with the double double meaning) I thought I'd bring in some of the odds and ends I've acquired over the years and one is a board from a Pr1me computer I worked on. It was gifted to me when the machine was retired. However, I'm a s/w kinda guy and I don't know a cpu board from a memory board from anything else. I figured this was the best place to ask about prime hardware, but sorry for being a little off-topic. It is an 18 inch-ish square green board with black chips and few white ones that say Bechman on them. The black ones are at least three different sizes. Along one side it has stickers that say LINES 0-3 ... LINES 12-15. That seems like a big clue, but I figured someone here would know what such a board might have been called. Thanks in advance. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
