MINC-11
Jerry B. Altzman
we were still using them at Columbia University's (presitigious?) Nevis
Labs doing testing on transport crates. They ran some perversion on RSTS/E
I think, and we even had a FORTRAN compiler on it. It ran on one of the
boards slapped together in a few days by some of the people up there.
I didn't get too much experience writing code on it, except for some
device-driver type software, but I do remember someone accidentally
deleting a summer's worth of work before realizing that we DIDN'T indeed
have the source backed up (all we had left was the executable). I even
remember the expression on my face when I was asked if I wanted to
reverse-engineer it back into FORTRAN....
DISCLAIMER: This isn't Columbia. This is me. Columbia is them.
//jbaltz
jerry b. altzman "We've got to get in to get out" 212 854 8058
jba...@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu jauus@cuvmb (bitnet)
...!rutgers!columbia!cunixf!jbaltz (bang!) NEVIS::jbaltz (HEPNET)
Barry Shein
From: jba...@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Jerry B. Altzman)
>Anyone out there remember the old DEC MINC-11's? Up until about a year ago,
>we were still using them at Columbia University's (presitigious?) Nevis
>Labs doing testing on transport crates. They ran some perversion on RSTS/E
>I think, and we even had a FORTRAN compiler on it. It ran on one of the
>boards slapped together in a few days by some of the people up there.
I had one at Harvard, about a decade ago. It ran RT-11 but used a
lab/graphics version of BASIC which was essentially the command shell
(similar to RSTS/E but not quite the same thing.) You could get out of
the BASIC and into RT-11 only by taking the system disk and bringing
it over to a real RT-11 system and editing some command files and
adding some missing pieces.
We got Unix/V6 running on the thing, that was Unix running on a 64KB
LSI-11/2 (not 11/23, no MMU) with just two 512KB floppy drives (RX02)
(including swap.) It was, um, amusing.
That wasn't the smallest configuration PDP-11 we had Unix running on,
tho close.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | b...@world.std.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
Norris Preyer
>Anyone out there remember the old DEC MINC-11's?
Hell yes! I'm using one now! We've two in our lab, and use the
three at the National Magnet Lab frequently. Very nice machines
for debugging experiments, since the heavily modified basic
can easily read from its a/d's, ieee bus, etc., etc. PDP11/23
processor, 64K ram, two 8" floppettes, many interface boards.
We had looked into getting a faster box to handle experiments,
but the closest we could find was an unfulfilled promise from
DEC to modify a microvax to do the same job.
r.peterson
> jba...@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Jerry B. Altzman) writes:
>>Anyone out there remember the old DEC MINC-11's?
>
> Hell yes! I'm using one now! We've two in our lab, and use the
> three at the National Magnet Lab frequently. Very nice machines
> for debugging experiments, since the heavily modified basic
> can easily read from its a/d's, ieee bus, etc., etc. PDP11/23
> processor, 64K ram, two 8" floppettes, many interface boards.
>
many interface boards.
Anybody out there remember these? Anyone want a couple?
--
One makes strong assumptions delving Roe Peterson
into the beginning of the universe... r...@sobeco.com
- Stephen Hawking, Cambridge uunet!sobeco!roe
Barry Shein
>Sounds a bit like the PDT-11's we sold for a while - without the
>many interface boards.
Oh, no, the PDT-11 and MINC are quite different. The MINC comes in a
large standup cart that you can wheel around, about the size of a
slightly truncated shopping cart, over waist high. The MINC has a
large panel for doing GPIB and other hookups and lots of slots for
instrumentation boards (A/D, D/A, clocks, real-time toys.) It also
came with a VT105, basically a VT100 with simple graphics (plenty to
do XY monitoring), wasn't regis, I think it may have been TEK
compatible.
The PDT-11 you can lift with one hand. However, a few hours at
Heffron's (where I am sure PDT-11's are still abundant) and you could
probably get the parts to do everything with a PDT that you could with
a MINC (they're both LSI-11/2's, you need a card cage, q-bus extender,
etc.)
>Anybody out there remember these? Anyone want a couple?
Yes, no.
thoma...@gmail.com
Quadibloc
> Here I am, 24 years after the last post.
Groups has stopped enforcing that USENET rule.
Not the MINC specifically, but given that while desktop PCs do have slots, analog
interface cards for them are a very specialized item - one wonders what
laboratories these days are using as a substitute for computers like the MINC.
Probably, whatever it is, it's expensive.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> glad to correspond on whatever random MINC-related topic.
http://www.vintagecomputer.net/fjkraan/comp/minc/index.html
http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/museum/digital/minc/
http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102678354
and this is a closely related machine, but without the interfaces, the MiniMINC:
http://electrickery.xs4all.nl/comp/miniminc/
As for the manuals, a few of them are available where one might expect them to be:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/minc/
John Savard
Joe Pfeiffer
Quadibloc
> Well, I've asked Mrs. Claus for one of these this year...
> http://www.bitscope.com/product/BS05/
So it isn't _quite_ a laboratory instrumentation system, but it does show that there are inexpensive analog inputs for microcomputers now available.
John Savard
Quadibloc
http://www.mccdaq.com/usb-data-acquisition/USB-1608FS.aspx
although the bandwidth isn't as high as I'd like.
John Savard
Joe Pfeiffer
> On Thursday, December 18, 2014 10:04:28 AM UTC-7, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>
>> Well, I've asked Mrs. Claus for one of these this year...
>
>> http://www.bitscope.com/product/BS05/
>
> Only 89 pounds sterling! That is impressive. Of course, the software
> likely doesn't support attaching more than one of them to a computer
> at a time - it has multiple digital ports, but only one analog port.
thoma...@gmail.com
Basic was not a great choice in some respects, but the marketing people wanted maximum ease of learning, and because our choices in DEC's product line were then limited to assembly language, Fortran, and Basic, Basic it was. A couple of us writers would have liked to see Pascal used, but at that time there was no Pascal compiler for the PDP-11/RT-11 environment on which the system was based.
The Basic interpreter was an unmodified, off the shelf copy of the standard RT-11/Basic interpreter. That meant, as a fringe benefit for DEC, the additional support costs associated with "MINC Basic" were almost nil. The working users I came across in subsequent years often used Forth or Fortran or other languages with which they were more comfortable, though.
Thanks again for the answer.
Tom
robert...@brown.edu
:-) I ran the original MINC BASIC software and FORTRAN. At one point a friend in the next building had an RT-11 emulator running on his VAX. I was often running Fortran programs inside that shell from my MINC 11/23. Was much faster doing Fourier analysis on eye movent data that way.
This sure stirred up a potfull of good memories.
bob