Article 4201 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!10.0.0.1!10.0.0.1 From: racerdave@net1plus.com (Dave Lyons) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: VB10C ? Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998 11:35:01 GMT Organization: http://www.supernews.com, The World's Usenet: Discussions Start Here Lines: 35 Message-ID: <361c9ce0.1297377843@10.0.0.1> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.200.157.49 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 907846206 P0XQBQRYN9D31D0C8C usenet54.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 X-No-Archive: yes Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4201 On Wed, 07 Oct 1998 17:10:28 -0700, lgreenwa@cts.com (Lawrence H Greenwald) wrote: >The KA-10 that is/was at Syracuse University had attached this big >graphics console box (I believe called a VB10C) that could run vector >graphics of some sort. Did anyone else have one? What did you use it for? > >--LG We had 4 of them in one room, running off of a KL with tops-20. They were used by the engineers to produce all the drawings for all the hardware. On the back side, it was SUDS. Every print was signed by "S. Foonley" in the box for the person who drew it. Wish I still had my KL print set. :-( The device is basically at PDP-11 based GT40 (GT42) connected via a DL10 such that the graphics commands would be fetched out of the -10/20 memory. I do remember getting asked about the the conditionals in the monitor used to enable supports for this hack. There was some very cryptic comments about the "Heliwell system" (I never sould spell Dick's name right.) Customers who had source were wondering what that system was. The shipped code had the hooks for the support, but didn't have the drivers, as this was a special one-off system that we didn't expect anyone else to run. In reality, there were 3 or 4 of these systems spread arround DEC, and almost every system or board designed in the late 70's, early 80's had the prints produced on them. IIRC, Dick's folks made sure the drivers and such worked, and built their own systems from source. BTW, that system may also have been one of the first "1091" systems, as it was the big blue boxes, but ran Tops-20, also, IIRC, the cpu was serial number "P3", The third prototype KL ever built. It was later replaced with a real production unit, but I forget the serial number. For those who remember the LAB layout in MR, it was in the NW corner of the room. Article 4255 of alt.sys.pdp10: Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!newshub.northeast.verio.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom!alderson From: alderson@netcom.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) Subject: Re: VB10C ? In-Reply-To: racerdave@net1plus.com's message of Thu, 08 Oct 1998 11:35:01 GMT Message-ID: Sender: alderson@netcom.netcom.com Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com Organization: NETCOM On-line services References: <361c9ce0.1297377843@10.0.0.1> Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 00:56:32 GMT Lines: 8 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4255 Close: Dick *Helliwell* (4 l's total). Dick ported the GNU utilities, GNU Emacs, Perl 4.xxx, and X11R5 to Tops-20 while working at XKL. -- Rich Alderson Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991 Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170) last name @ XKL dot COM Chief systems administrator, XKL LLC, 1998-now