I had posted a while back about the manuals for M4 and Pick that I had just
come across in the basement. Bruce Ray has agreed to scan them and make them
available to people. Now that I'm packing them up to be sent to him, thought
I'd post a more clear list as to what I have...
M4 Data 1/2 tape drive diagnostics quick reference
M4 Data 1/2 tape drive optional SCSI controller jumper/switch reference
M4 Data 1/2 tape drive 9900 series field service manual
Microdata Reality Assembly Language Reference Manual: This is the original
definitive work, written by Dick and Chandru. Often called "The Rainbow
Book" because of the color scheme on the front. A LOT of the nuances of the
Pick Assembly environment were never really documented in later manuals from
other vendors. Many of these nuances were absolutely essential to even write
a simple program. The other vendors all stole the basic text of this book
and reworked it. However, most of them left out many things that are
critical, and most of those things ARE in this manual. I recall that most
Pick Assembler programmers kept two books on their shelf. The assembly
manual for whatever vendor they were using, AND this one. The progression of
machines microdata put out was the Reality, Reality Royale, Sequel, Series
18, and Spirit (all that I recall). All of this hardware was of their own
design (but I think they bought the M1600 cpu for reality from elsewhere).
Ultimate Computer Systems Pick Assembler Manual: Ultimate was one of the few
vendors who sold both firmware implementations and software implementations
of Pick (referring to the translation between missionary and native
instruction sets), so their assembler manual is quite interesting as it
points out of lot of the differences between the two types of
implementation. They called their pick operating system "Ultimate O/S".
Their manual is probably the most complete for later implementations,
because they still listed out process control block formats and such. The
original rainbow book from micro data did this, but in later generations
those formats changed very much - so this book's pcb format lists were about
the only documentation of later generation (from other vendors too) internal
structures. Ultimate released pick on "standard" hardware rather than
building their own. I know I sold many systems based on PDP-11/03's, and
Honeywell DPS-6's. I think I recall them releasing systems on Honeywell Bull
too, a rebadged RS/6000 if memory serves. Oh yeah, and I remember doing the
very first install of Ultimates version of Pick/370... Pick running on an
IBM 4341, using two Series 1's as front end processors for terminal I/O...
very cute system. It ran on top of VM, so you could literally have multiple
Pick systems on the one machine.
Ultimate Computer Systems Assembly Programming Notes: This is a 22 page
handout... Ultimate gave it out as a "quick start" thing for pick
programmers who were familiar with other vendors implementations but not
ultimates. It also clarified a few things that weren't particularly clear in
the original rainbow book.
Alpha Microsystems Pick Open Architecture v1.3 Assembler Manual: Alpha
Microsystems had a lot of different computer systems. I seem to recall they
were more popular originally for an OS called AMOS, which was definitely not
pick. I think they built their own computers originally, but I know most of
the pick systems they came out with were 386/486 type machines, and they
were not propietary, just off the shelf PC's. Well, except for the magical
firmware board that kept you from running their pick version on just any old
PC. They sold Pick R83, and Pick Open Architecture too. I can't recall what
the big deal was about Open Architecture. I seem to recall it had something
to do with being able to run in true protected mode with regards to the x86
chip. Their assembler manual, while being a bit skimpy, did happen to have a
few nice tidbits of info in it that weren't obvious in other vendors
manuals. That's the thing about Pick assembler - reading one manual you feel
like something is left out, but by reading all the manuals available from
all the different vendors, most of it came together. The rest was trial and
error and digging through the OS source code (if you had it).
General Automation 3.8 Assembly Changes: This is a set of notes, detailing
for assembly programmers what they had to change in their software to make
stuff written for prior than 3.8 release to run on 3.8 release. It has some
particularly good info in it that is specific to GA implementations.
General Automation 3.8 Assembler Manual: This is, somewhat unfortunately, a
work in progress. Most of the Pick vendors/licensees restricted the use of
the assembler to internal use only. There were two reasons for this - one,
they considered even knowing the assembler a trade secret. Each vendor came
out with their own modifications that they thought made their version of
pick "better" than others, and they didn't want people knowing anything more
than necessary about how they did it. The other reason was, the pick
assembler was a totally unprotected programming environment. A small bug in
your program would frequently destroy the entire system - it was a very
"fragile" environment. Your code had to be very well behaved, and it had to
follow strict guidelines for interfacing with other routines and the O/S
itself. Of course, those guidelines weren't really documented anywhere at
all, not even in the rainbow book. Nowhere did you generally find out that
you couldn't use R12 when calling a particular system subroutine cause it
used the contents as scratch, there was no memory or process protection,
etc. This manual is somewhat odd in that GA finally "saw the light" that it
was good to let 3rd party people enhance the OS with their own add-on
software, for GA's own sake. So they took the Pick on the PC assembler
manual and loaded it into a word processor and started to make all the
changes necessary to make a new, fully documented assembler manual for GA's
version of pick. This manual was printed in the middle of that effort. As a
result, parts of it are very GA specific, but most of it is just a verbatim
copy of the Pick on the PC manual (which I have somewhere, but haven't come
across it yet). So, it's interesting as a "work in progress". GA's pick line
was all software implementations, built around the MC68000. I remember
models 1500, 2500, 3500, 5500, 7820, 8830, 2820, 3820, 1700, 1750. I'm sure
I'm missing some. This was the vendor I had the most contact with, I still
have a 1750 and a 2820 in my basement I need to get up and running. OMTI
controller in them both :) I SEEM to recall a pertec to scsi interface in
one, not sure.
There is one manual I used to have but no longer do, so I'll throw up a
hail-mary and see if anyone has it - I curse the day I lost it. It was the
General Automation Firmware Executive manual, and documented the roms on the
mainboard. It wasn't specific to pick, you could load programs in motorola
S-record format from tape, etc. Any one have this perchance?
Regards,
Jay West
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Received on Sun Jan 19 2003 - 13:33:59 GMT