On 14/01/13 9:14 PM, Gregg Levine wrote:
On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 9:06 PM, Toby Thain<toby%telegraphics.com.au@localhost>
wrote:
On 14/01/13 2:12 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
On Jan 14, 2013, at 1:40 PM, John Wilson wrote:
From: Toby Thain<toby%telegraphics.com.au@localhost>
I have
a couple of J11's sitting around, and a dozen Transputers. I'd love to
learn enough electronics, and have enough spare time, to build the
support circuitry and run them.
You definitely should! I don't know much about the Transputer but if
it's
anything like the XMOS XS1 CPU (same architect) it must be a ton of
fun.
John Wilson
D Bit
Transputers are interesting beasts. All I know is their theory, which
appears to be small compute nodes interconnected by multiple fast
message
passing links. So you can build a large multicomputer setup with a mesh
of
those.
For programming, you can use C or the like, but there's a different
programming language (Occam) specifically designed to make use of that
message passing machinery. Given who created it (C.A.R. Hoare) I assume
it
ties into his research into the design of reliable distributed
algorithms.
I used two T800 TRAMs in the late 1980s, attached to a NuBus card (Levco
Translink) in Macintosh II series. I programmed them in C (under MPW) and
yes, they are heaps of fun.
I also ported TeX, METAFONT and associated utilities to the Transputer
(since evan a single T800 was so much faster than the 68020 host machine
and
I was using them for production work every day).
--Toby
paul
Hello!
I remember that family of processors. Interesting family.
I also remember my second Mac. It was a Mac II who worked at a
typography facility that my father ran. The system did a better job
running Quark Express and feeding output to a pair of laser
phototypesetters. And this was a facility who also hosted a pair of
(very) bored Eclipse machines (DG) who did the same, and a trio of
regular systems for phototypesetting.
I bought a used Linotronic L100 - the hardware still exists, it's stored in
Sydney Australia. I wasn't able to find a collector interested in it, even
though it was the first PostScript imagesetter. I used to drive it with TeX,
but also all the other graphic arts software including Illustrator and
Photoshop, Quark XPress, etc.
Likewise, I worked with my father; we ran a small newspaper for a few years.
Long story, but all Mac based from about 1987 until 1992 when I left.
I have a friend in Melbourne Australia who collects Nova 3 and Eclipse
machinery: http://chookfest.net/nova3/index.html
I wrote this assembler to help him out (Nova/PDP-8):
http://telegraphics.com.au/svn/dpa/trunk/
--Toby
You (Toby) must be aware that TI invented the NuBus backplane and used
it for the family of LISP systems that were popular about that time
period. I believe all of those machines were based on bit-slice
technology.
Apple licensed the bus and used the parts TI created to support it,
for that family of machines, until the invention of the PCI bus.
That's why Dave I know a fair bit about the DG machine living with all of
you.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8%gmail.com@localhost
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."