Does anyone have details about the STC ZEBRA? Tony?

From: Derek Peschel <dpeschel_at_eskimo.com>
Date: Sun Jan 13 04:20:38 2002

STC = Stantec = Standard Telephone and Cable. They sold a truly strange
computer called the ZEBRA. It was designed to be cheap (it used a drum
for storage and did arithmetic serially).

The instruction format is unusual -- 15 function bits (I think each affects
a gate) and a 12-bit address of a drum location and a 5-bit address of a
"fast store" location (basically a small number of registers). The amount
of logic in the machine is small, so the instruction decoding is simple
in a sense. But the logic is connected in very subtle ways -- two things
can happen independently, or an instruction can set a whole sequence
of events in motion.

There is an emulator for this machine; I have some of the literature
about it too. But I don't have the manual or the schematics, and the
literature I have just doesn't make the design "click" into place
in my head. The emulator code is not very intuitive either. So that's
why I'm hoping someone else has heard of this machine.

-- Derek

P.S. Tony, I think you would enjoy this design (if you don't already
     know about it).
Received on Sun Jan 13 2002 - 04:20:38 GMT