help with some recent finds

From: Sam Ismail <dastar_at_crl.com>
Date: Sat Aug 30 01:41:20 1997

Ok, I picked up some keen stuff today that I'd like to hopefully get some
information for.

1. Tektronix 4041 Computer/Controller.

Now this is neat. Unfortunately it doesn't do a whole lot at the moment.
First a description: its about 8" wide by 8" high (front) by 2' long. It
has a built-in 20 column thermal printer and a DC-100 tape drive. The
front panel consists of a numeric keypad plus some other special function
keys, an LED display and some status LEDs. I opened it up and found that
it is a 68000 based system. It seems to use an S-100 bus, since the cards
have S-100 edge connectors. It has four slots, and two of the slots are
filled. One has the CPU card with the 68000 processor. The other is a
Standard I/O card. The two other slots are Read/Write Memory (RAM) and an
Option Card slot. The front panel also has a slot for a ROM pack. The
ROM pack is a tray that pulls out and has two ROM packs plugged in with
room for 4 more ROM packs. The ROM packs included allow for BASIC
programming. On the back is an RS-232C port and a GP-IB (IEEE488) port.
It is circa 1981.

When I first booted it up the printer started spitting out paper. The
next time I turned it on only the power LED came on. I then turned it
off and opened up the cover to examine its innards. I pulled each card
and checked them out then replaced them. I turned it back on and this
time got "SELF TEST" on the display. It never does anything after that.

I got two manuals with it, and of what I've read so far, the self test
should check all the controllers for the tape drive, the printer, the
front panel, and perform other diagnostics, then show the ROM version,
but it never does this. I'm wondering if a lack of a RAM card is the
culprit.

This system also came with an optional programming keyboard, which was
just a full size keyboard for entering in programs.

If anyone can shed any light on this sucker and what else it could do I
would appreciate it. I remember seeing in a book I have a picture of the
graphics output of some Tektronix computer on a screen. I can't remember
what book this was in or even where that book may be. I wonder if this
is the system that produced that output?

2. A Lynx 460 Floppy Drive Alignment Tester. It has two connectors for
8" and 5.25" floppy drives. It has all sorts of toggle switches on it for
selecting the drive (1, 2, 3 or 4), the head (1 or 0), the track address,
etc. It also has status LEDs to show, for instance, Amplitude, Radial,
Head Load, etc. Not that I know what any of this means (not yet at
least, I got it with manuals and the manuals have a nice introduction to
disk drive theory of operation). Anyway, apparently you use this in
conjunction with alignment disks. Looks like a cool box (it's very
small, the size of a notebook) that will come in handy in years to come.

Any further information on either of these would be appreciated.

Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
Received on Sat Aug 30 1997 - 01:41:20 BST