ICL PERQ

From: Mike McCauley <mikem_at_open.com.au>
Date: Wed Oct 24 21:14:17 2001

Hi Tony,

thanks for the thorough description. Youve multiplied my knowledge by a
factor of at least 10.

Sounds like I have a 2T2 with PNX.
This soft microcoding thing is amazing. Do I understand that you have been
writing new microcode?

The Raster Op machine sounds a lot like the blitter in Amiga. I think the
early PARC machines had something similar? But this must predate them both?

Cheers.

On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 10:41, Tony Duell wrote:
> > Anyone out there own an ICL Perq?
>
> No, I don't have 'an' ICL PERQ. I've got 4 of them :-)
>
> > Ive got one in storage, working last time I looked. Seem to be
> > interesting beasts, a small mini with a very early Unix (Release 3),
> > bitmapped display, 'puck' pointing device and a primitive graphical
> > interface. Possibly one of the first bitmapped display Unixes?
>
> I belive that PNX (PERQ Unix) was the first Unix to have graphics
> operations in the kernel.
>
> > Anyone have more info or history?
>
> The first thing to do is to determine exactly what you have. There are 3
> different cabinet designs, and various internal variations :
>
> PERQ 1 : The easiest way to recognise this series is that it has an 8"
> floppy drive mounted horizonatally on the front. On the bottom of the
> keyboard there's the 3 digit DDS display which shows error codes, etc.
>
> Inside the box there's a Shugart SA4000-series 14" hard disk, either 12M
> or (more commonly) 24M. 3 main circuit boards -- CPU, Memory (often
> 1Mbytes, although 2Mbytes is possible) (and video display), CIO (Just
> about all the input/output circuitry, including a Z80 for low speed I/O).
> 2 option slots for the CPU option board (never produced AFAIK), and the
> Optional I/O card (Ethernet, PERQlink, Laser printer controller). The
> monitor is a VMI portrait unit
>
> There are 2 versions of this machine : PERQ 1, with 4K of writeable
> control store on the CPU board and PERQ 1a with 16K WCS and some extra
> microinstructions.
>
> PERQ 2 : This machine has an 8" floppy drive mounted vertically on the
> front, and has the DDS on the main box, next to the power switch. It uses
> the same CPU as the PERQ 1a. The memory boards are similar, but some are
> modified to drive a landscape monitor. The I/O board was redesigned, and
> now includes an ethernet interface and more memory on the Z80 I/O
> processor (which can now run user-downloaded programs). Same 2 option
> slots, and the same Optional I/O cards work in the PERQ 2s (yes, you can
> have 2 ethernet interfaces on the same machine).
>
> There are 3 known versions :
>
> PERQ 2 T1 : KME Portrait monitor (normally), 8" Micropolis hard disk
> mounted vertically at the back of the machine. Normally 1M RAM
>
> PERQ 2T2. Normally Moniterm Landscape monitor (although a PERQ systems
> Portrait monitor is claimed to ezist). 5.25" ST506-interfaced hard disk.
> 2Mbyte machines are common.
>
> PERQ 2T4. VERY rare. It's similar to a PERQ 2T2 (5.25" drive), but the
> CPU is redeisgned to be a 24 bit unit. This allowed more memory to be
> fitted (up to 16M words == 32Mbytes), although only 4Mbyte machines are
> known. Changes to all 3 boards (CPU to make it 24 bit, memory to make it
> 4M, EIO to make the DMA controller 24 bit). Same option cards, etc.
>
> PERQ 3a (AKA PERQ AGW330). This is an ICL design (nothing really to do
> with PERQ systems), and uses a 68020 CPU rather than the wonderful
> soft-microcoded board in the older PERQs. IMHO it's a PERQ in name only
> (which is why the 1's and 2's are called 'classic PERQs') although the
> graphics processor does allow user microcode (it's a pair of AMD29116s).
> Looks like a deep tower PC, with a vertically mounted 5.25" floppy drive
> on the front, and a 4 digit hexadecimal DDS display next to it.
>
> The CPU in the classic PERQ is interesting. Most of them are 20 bit CPUs
> (!) using 5 74S181 ALUs. The full 20 bits are used for calculating
> addresses, but as the memory is only 16 bits wide, for much of the time
> only 16 bits are used. There are 256 20-bit wide general purpose
> registers. The microcode is loaded from disk[1] when the machine is
> powered up, so the machine can run any reasonable instruction set.
> There's 4K or 16K of control store controlled by an 2910 sequencer,
> possibly extended by 2 bits (for the 16K models) -- the '2 bit kludge' :-)
>
> [1] Yes, OK, it can also load from the PERQlink 16 bit parallel interface.
>
> 16K models also have a few extra featurs, including an 'index' register
> to select one of the 256 general-purpose registers (this is the only CPU
> I've programmed where you can do a trick like that at the microcode
> level), MULSTEP and DIVSTEP logic (to speed up multiplication and
> division), and so on.
>
> There is also a graphics processor, used to update screen bitmaps. This is
> part of the main CPU, and uses the latter to address words of said
> bitmaps in main memory. The actually graphics processor hardware combines
> 2 words (one from the source bitmap, one from the destination), taking
> account of the fact that the boundary of the region to be updated may not
> be a word boundary, and that the 2 bitmaps need not be bit-aligned.
>
> Oh, what the heck...
>
> Title : Raster Operations
> Original : Clementine
> Group : Traditional (?)
> Introduction: One of the best kept mysteries of the PERQ workstation CPU
> board is the operation of the 'Raster Op' machine - a circuit designed to
> combine two bitmaps and produce a result - obviously a useful function on a
> window-driven machine. Anyway, the following compuer filksong should at
> least partly remedy that. It's a virtually 100% accurate description of the
> graphics pipeline circuits and how the 2 bitmaps flow through them
>
>
> Song:
>
> In the wierd PERQ CPU board
> Released in seventy-nine
> Live some digital logic circuits
> Graphics bitmaps to combine
>
> Chorus:
> Raster Ops Now! Raster Ops Now!
> Through the shift and to combine
> Watch the screen image updating
> Through the raster op pipeline
>
> The fifo is loaded straight from memory.
> That's the first stage of our line.
> Clocked in by the controlling logic
> Quadwords loaded all the time.
>
> Source data flows out of the fifo
> To the shifter which shall align
> The edges of updated regions
> To make them easy to combine.
>
> But each word of the destination
> With 2 source words may combine
> So the last word out of the fifo
> is latched in the semi-pipeline
>
> Take thirty-one bits of the source words
> From the last stage of the line
> The shifter shall select just sixteen
> To feed on and thus combine
>
> The destination words from memory
> Through a single stage pipeline
> That's all that's needed before they enter
> Proms and thus with source combine
>
> The Proms take source and destination
> A new bitmap to combine
> Edges of the updated region
> The mask word shall now define
>
> There is one more D-type register
> The last stage of our pipeline
> To send the data back to memory
> Two clocks later - just in time (oooops Tine :-))
>
> The source and destination bit fields
> The shift value shall define
> Subtracted by a control PROM
> Thus the 2 bitmaps align
>
> The width of the updated region
> With the dest we now combine
> This determines the edge positions
> And the mask we can devine
>
> A pair of small finite state machines
> Shall ensure this runs to time
> Control signals thus generating
> For the raster op pipeline
>
>
> As regards software, there are 3 common OSes :
>
> POS, which was the first (PERQ or Pascal OS). It's single-user, and uses
> a much modified Pascal as the system language. The POS microcode
> implements a modified P-code instruction set (with graphics operations,
> etc).
>
> PNX is PERQ Unix. Loosely System 3 IIRC. It has some kind of windowing
> system.
>
> Accent is a predecessor of Mach (and comes from CMU IIRC). Multitasking,
> and supposed to be quite reasonable to use.
>
> BUT, I use POS most of the time. Reason : It doesn't get in the way if I
> want to modify the microcode (something which can only be done at the
> 'bare metal' level). Since that's one of the main reasons for using a
> PERQ (if I want a unix box I've got plenty of others), I stick to POS.
>
> -tony

-- 
Mike McCauley                               mikem_at_open.com.au
Open System Consultants Pty. Ltd            Unix, Perl, Motif, C++, WWW
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Received on Wed Oct 24 2001 - 21:14:17 BST

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