Masscomp computers?

From: Joe R. <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Sun Nov 28 08:09:40 2004

At 07:10 PM 11/27/04 +0000, you wrote:
>On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 23:53 -0500, Joe R. wrote:
>> Mine has a sticker on the back but the model number on it is totally
>> meaningless. I decided that it's a MC5600 based on the number of CPUs and
>> number of card slots and the physical description of the machine. FWIW this
>> one is a rack mount version and there's almost no mention of it in the
>> manuals except in the installation manual.
>>
>
>Right, I had about 5 minutes to look at our Masscomp earlier...
>hopefully will have more time tomorrow.
>
>It's got a Micropolis 8" hard disk in the base, which is something (not
>much use without given we have no install media for it!). Also a QIC
>tape drive and a floppy drive at the front.

   That sounds older than mine. It has 5 1/4" hard drive and 5 1/4" floppy
drive. Any idea what interface your HD uses? It might help pin down the
interface card used.


>
>Cards labelled on the edges as follows:
>
>FPP

   Just as a guess I'd say that this is a Floating Point Processor. My
manual talks about two diffferent ones, the LFP (Lightning Floaing Point)
modules and SLFP (Super Lightnintg Floating Point) module. These meet the
IEEE 754 Floating Point Standard. The LFP is syncronous and the SLFP is
syncronous or asyncronous. FWIw there was also a VA-1 (Vector Accelerator)
module.


>MEM2

   below

>APU
     I'm guessing that this is the AFM (Axillery Function Module). This
card in neither MB or SMI. It's used to control which CPU card boots the
system and to comunicate with it using the PIB serial port. It also has SMI
bus terminators and arbitration circuitry for the Multibus. There are at
least four types of AFM boards.

>MEM
   
   I'm guessing that this and the MEM2 are memory cards. According to the
manual they should be marked as CMM or TMM. SMI interface.

>MPU

  Probably the "CMPU" card. SMI CPU card with 68020 CPU. This is the same
CPU card that mine use.


>GPX

    Aw! Finally a card that is in my manual. The GPX is the Graphic
Processor Expansion Module. It functions solely as a slave to the GPM and
expands it's raster memoey. Each GPX adds an additional 4 planes of raster
memory and a color map. Each GPM can support 2 GPXs. These are neither MB
or SMI.


>GPM

    Another a card that's in my manual. The GPM is a the Graphics Processor
Module. This one is what MC referrs to as an extended height card residing
on the MB (Multibus). It preforms independent graphics processing using an
8MHz 68000.It has 128K of RAM program memory and 256k of raster memory
consisting of two independent frame buffers, organized into 2 planes,

>DSD

   I don't know what this is but it might stand for Drive System
(something). Check and see if it connects to the drives.


>
>No Ethernet board unfortunately. FPP is presumably a floating point
>board? No idea about APU. DSD I'm guessing does the floppy/tape/hard
>drive?

    That would be my guess. I don't know if your OS will support Ethernet
cards but I have plenty of them. Your system is obviously configured for
graphics whereas mine is configured for data acquisition and control.




>
>I haven't tried/bothered pulling boards yet.

  Note that the boards are >> not << marked MCPU, etc etc.



>
>I still need to find the keyboard / mouse for it before I can justify
>spending any time trying to get it running, of course (anyone have an
>image of what the keyboard and mouse look like so I know what to look
>for?)

   I can look through the maintenance manual it should have a picture.



   You should be able to boot it using a terminal. According to the manual,
when you're in the console mode press the interrupt switch and it sahould
display "Hit return to prompt". Now this is where it gets interesting. It
will not only detect which terminal you press the return on and make it the
console device but it will aslo detect how many times you press return and
set the baud rate accordingly! The exact rate depends on if you're using
TTY 0, 1, or 2. Pressing return 3 times will get you 300 baud on any of
them but other than that they all vary and according to the chart they can
still give you up to four different rates for the same port and number or
returns. But I don't understand why. Your best bet is to try it and see
what you get. You should end up with a ">>>" prompt on the terminal. The
control codes for the console appear to be the standard ^C. ^X, ^R, ^O etc
etc. Not it said this this should happen when you're in the console mode.
there's a setting in the NVRAM that controls this but I have no idea how
you change it without the OS running. IF you were running the Unix OS you
can type "reboot -h" to change it.

   Joe


>
>cheers
>
>Jules
>
>
Received on Sun Nov 28 2004 - 08:09:40 GMT