Pre-Rescue scouting mission - info needed (nicolet, Decitek, and DG)

From: Sellam Ismail <dastar_at_ncal.verio.com>
Date: Sun Feb 28 11:52:08 1999

On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Jay West wrote:

> 1) Nicolet
> There are two units. The first is a model NIC-80 Data Processor. It looks
> identical to the unit on sellam's website. There's three rows of lights
<...>

The description sounds very close (btw, the web site Jay refers to is an
unpublished preliminary page on the Nicolet 1080 machine I have in my
collection...I really need to finish the page).

> The second unit is a Nicolet model NIC-298 "diskette storage unit". It has
> two 8" floppy drives. There's a row of lights vertically on the side called
> read, write, and ltrack. There's an unlabelled pushbutton on the upper
> right, and the lower right is a power switch.


> Questions: The cpu definitely says model NIC-80. How does this relate to the
> model sellam has? More to the point, can someone tell me about operation of

I think this may be an 1180. The 1080 generally didn't have floppies for
it as it was from the early to mid 70s. Mine has a paper tape interface
and a hard disk interface to a Diablo 30.

> this unit with regards to what OS it ran, what compilers or languages, etc.

I have a couple hundred paper tapes with all sorts of debuggers,
assemblers, BASIC, I think Forth, and other applications (including some
games).

> Did one hook up a terminal to this or was it just console input? What made

On the back is an RS-232 serial interface. You can hook a dumb terminal
to it as a system console.

> this unit different from more well known computers (ie. what was it's
> specialty)? Most importantly, is any real documentation around on this unit
> (operators guide, schematics, logic diagrams, programming info)?

It was a 20-bit architecture. The CPU was built from TTL (the boards that
make up the CPU are shown on my website). It was built mainly for data
acquisition and analysis in a lab environment. I have a pretty complete
documentation set, including programming guide, operators guide, etc. No
schematics as far as I know but there's a whole box of docs at my
warehouse that I haven't looked at in a while.

> 2) Paper tape reader
> There was what appeared to be a paper tape reader. Had the leftbay/rightbay
> arrangement like a PDP PC04/05 with the read cells in the center. The brand
> name appears to be Decitek. There were two switches in the center, one was a
> toggle for power, the other I couldn't make out. I could easily be mistaken,
> but the bays looked much wider than a PC04/05, making me wonder if it took
> wider paper tape than I'm used to seeing.

How funny. I got this very paper tape reader with my Nicolet. I wonder
if it was standard issue from Nicolet? There's nothing special about it.
It uses standard sized paper tape (was there such a thing as "wide" paper
tape?)

> Questions: Anyone have any ideas what type of system this was compatible
> with, what type of interface it might use, and does anyone have docs for it?

As with most any other mini of the day, it wasn't compatible with
anything. It was a proprietary computer system designed and built by
Nicolet Instrumentation Corporation in Madison, Wisconsin.

> Finally - I'm still trying to decide if I want to get all of this or some of
> it (depends on the prices, when I looked today none of this stuff was marked
> so I'll have to ask the owner). If there's any of it I decide I don't want
> that others here are interested in - let me know!

I'm certainly interested in the Nicolet and drives!

Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
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Received on Sun Feb 28 1999 - 11:52:08 GMT

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